Art student Ralph Tone is working in Miami as a bellboy. He meets
Hollywood hopeful Maria Duigan and falls head over heels for the
ambitious beauty. As Ralph fuels his obsession by booze, pills, and lack
of sleep, they both quickly become entangled with sleazy pornographer
Donald McKay.
Charles Willeford's Made in Miami was originally released to the
unsuspecting masses in 1958 under the title Lust Is a Woman by a
publisher incapable of spelling the author's name correctly on the
cover. Written in white heat by "the unlikely father of Miami crime
fiction" (Atlantic Monthly) to match the requirements of the market,
the book remains a textbook example of lurid 1950s pulp fiction. It was
also a springboard to the author's later masterpieces Miami Blues and
Sideswipe.