Combining suspense with satire and making it work may not be the easiest thing for a writer to do, but Rich Wickliffe did not want to shy away from the challenge.

“I want to be the first writer to successfully combine suspense with satire,” the Coral Springs resident said. “That’s what I’ve tried to do in ‘Tropical Windfall.’ There are a lot of clichés that I’ve turned upside down. I hope I got it right.”

“Tropical Windfall,” Wickliffe’s first novel, is set in South Florida and takes the reader on a journey that starts from Key West and moves through Miami Beach, Boca Raton, and Palm Beach. “I’ve been here for 32 years," he said. "I know the many nuances of South Florida. It’s beautiful, bizarre, romantic and sometimes scary.”

It was a news story that inspired the novel, Wickliffe said. “I heard about a couple who found a fortune and reported it to the authorities. As no one came to claim it, they were allowed to keep it. It made me think what would happen if the bad guys came back to claim the money. ‘Tropical Windfall’ tells the story of a couple who gets a fortune but reports only half of it to the authorities.”

Read the full article in today's issue of the Coral Springs Forum. Arun can be reached at 954-574-5339.