Choke - Stuart Woods

Chuck Chandler arrives in Key West, Florida at the end of his tether. Since blowing his career as a top tour tennis professional he has failed to keep a series of teaching jobs at plush clubs, usually because he has been unable to keep his hands off his female students. At Key West’s Olde Island Racquet Club he yields to temptation once again, this time getting involved with the beautiful Clare Carras, who is married to an enigmatic older man with no apparent past and who turns out to be a great deal more than the tennis pro can handle.

Suddenly, the easygoing Chuck is in over his head, suspected of murder and on the verge of losing not only his modest career and all his possessions, but his freedom, and maybe even his life, as well.

Enter Tommy Sculley, a former New York Police Department homicide detective augmenting his pension with a job on the Key West force, and his partner, Daryl Haynes, who is smarter than he looks. The two detectives find themselves struggling to stay afloat in a shark-infested investigation that stretches from the Florida Keys to Los Angeles and back, involving not only the treacherous Clare, but a furious mob boss as well who is determined to get back whatever belongs to him, and doesn’t care who he has to kill to do it.