Gary Buslik
Five books. Some of them are funny.
ABOUT
About Gary
In the third grade, Gary Buslik was voted the kid most likely to get the crap beaten out of him. For the first three and a half years of college, he lied to his parents, telling them he was in pre-law. When he was finally exposed as an English major, his mother couldn’t stop sobbing, and his father stomped around the house, yelling, “Big man! He knows the parts of speech!” In revenge, Gary earned an English Literature Ph.D. and made his dad call him “Doctor.”
His travel book A Rotten Person Travels the Caribbean won the 2009 Benjamin Franklin Award and a ForeWord Magazine Book of the Year Award, and his stories have appeared repeatedly in the Travelers’ Tales anthologies. He taught at the University of Illinois Chicago.
His most recent novel, Sister Luscious, is the first in the Jamaica Gold’s Bar & Detective Agency series. His next novel, Nighthawks, is a historical novel. The second Jamaica Gold novel comes after that.
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The newest one
Sister Luscious
Book one of the Jamaica Gold’s Bar & Detective Agency
Two men in surgical masks were waiting in the dark in Jay Gold’s cottage. One of them yelled, “Shut that bird up!” The bird remembered.
Jay “Jamaica” Gold, an ex-smuggler and ex-Chicagoan, runs a combination beach bar and detective agency on the island of Oranje.
The robbers cracked his bartender’s cheek with a knife handle and went out the window with the weekend’s cash, and with it the governor’s engagement present to Jay: twenty-five thousand dollars in hundreds. His waitress came to face down between the bartender’s shoulder blades and could not make her legs work.
A year goes by. A very big man with the meaty build of a gorilla sits down at the bar and orders a Myers’s on ice and a glass of beer. Kvetch, the macaw on the perch beside the television, watches him for a while. Then the bird says it: “Shut that bird up!”
Kizzy drops her tray.
She runs out of the bar and leaves Jay a note asking him not to follow her. She has gone back to Sable, the island where a man once named her Sister Luscious. Jay follows her.
It’s funny and it’s profane, and people die in it. Welcome to Jamaica Gold’s Bar & Detective Agency. Try not to get too rum punched.
What other writers said about it
“Sister Luscious, perfect for the fans of Carl Hiaasen’s Bad Monkey—a suspenseful, comedic Caribbean thriller with unforgettable heroes, scurrilous villains, and a cheesecake-loving, lactose-intolerant macaw whose heart-pounding adventures are the coconut cream on this delicious book.”
Kirsten Koza, author of Lost In Moscow
“Buslik’s Sister Luscious is what would ensue if Hunter Thompson and Elmore Leonard went to the Caribbean and collaborated on a case. It is funny and cruel, light-hearted and dark without letup.”
James Lawrence, author of Passage of the Hurricane
“Solving a crime is hard. Doing it with a stoned macaw is nearly impossible.”
Jill Paris, author of Life Is Like a Walking Safari
Also by Gary Buslik
A Rotten Person Travels the Caribbean
A homesick grump island-hops the West Indies, which he describes as resembling “a string of gems or possibly drool.” Winner of the 2009 Benjamin Franklin Award and a ForeWord Magazine Book of the Year Award.
The Missionary’s Position
A comic novel set in the Caribbean, full of plot twists and quirky characters, and about as fast as an island minibus.
Akhmed and the Atomic Matzo Balls
Iran’s president teams up with the leaders of Venezuela and Cuba to smuggle radioactive matzo balls into Miami Beach.
Champagne and Sour Grapes
Short stories about marriage, sometimes poignant and often funny.
Review copies and media inquiries: [email protected]
© 2026 Gary Buslik