Like your favorite television show.

In my first novel, Midnight Miami, releasing May 12, 2026, celebrity private investigators Grits McCoy and Gravy Watkins spend their days as the public faces of the Stone Detective Agency and their nights hunting creatures that prefer to operate in the shadows.

Except from 9 PM to 10 PM on Saturdays.

Because that is when they watch The Love Boat.

To better explain the world of Midnight Miami, which takes place in Miami during the tumultuous summer of 1981, I decided to revisit an episode of The Love Boat that Grits and Gravy might realistically have watched.

For those unfamiliar with the show, The Love Boat was one of the defining television programs of the late 1970s and early 1980s. Airing on ABC from 1977 to 1986, the series followed the weekly adventures of passengers and crew aboard the cruise ship Pacific Princess. The show mixed romance, comedy, and light drama while featuring a rotating cast of celebrity guest stars, many of whom played exaggerated or comedic versions of their public personas.

Each episode typically followed a three-storyline format. One storyline, usually a comedic one, focused on the ship’s crew—Captain Stubing, Cruise Director Julie McCoy, bartender Isaac Washington, purser Gopher Smith, or my favorite character, the four times divorced Dr. Adam "Doc" Bricker—while the other two stories were a romantic comedy and a dramatic (or melodramatic) tale. The narratives would unfold simultaneously and intersect during the voyage before resolving neatly by the time the ship returned to port.

During the summer of 1981, Grits and Gravy would have been watching reruns from the show’s 1980–1981 fourth season, which included 28 episodes.

For this review, I chose the seventh episode—a special 90-minute episode whose title alone might require the extra running time to process:

“The Horse Lover / Secretary to the Stars / Julie’s Decision / Gopher and Isaac Buy a Horse / Village People Ride Again.”

The episode originally aired on November 22, 1980, during the television industry’s November “sweeps” period. Sweeps months were when television stations measured viewership to determine advertising rates for the following year. Networks traditionally responded by bringing out bigger guest stars and bigger stories.

The Love Boat responded by giving viewers five storylines instead of the usual three, along with the star power of the Village People.

The connecting thread for the episode is that the Pacific Princess is sailing to Acapulco for a horse race—the Acapulco Steeplechase.

Will hijinks and romance ensue?

Let’s find out.

The Horse Lover

This terribly named storyline features real-life married couple Allen Ludden and Betty White—yes, that Betty White, who is absolutely delightful here.

Ludden plays a man who convinces his wife to take a cruise without revealing the real reason for the trip: he plans to race his beloved horse, Jessica, in the steeplechase. Unfortunately for him, the horse receives far more affection than the wife does.

Betty White’s neglected spouse begins to drift toward the attention of David Doyle, best known as Bosley from Charlie’s Angels. Doyle was a frequent Love Boat guest star, appearing in six episodes, and he often played smooth-talking romantics.

While Doyle was never exactly a leading-man heartthrob, the script makes Ludden’s character so oblivious to his wife’s feelings that the possibility of Betty White running off with Bosley starts to seem almost reasonable.

Doyle even makes an indecent proposal, which she briefly considersand informs her husband about.

Just as it appears Betty White may be headed for a Dutch honeymoon, Ludden sells the horse to Bosley and recommits himself to his wife.

Love is saved.

Jessica the horse changes owners.

Everyone learns an important lesson. Don’t love a horse more than your wife.

Secretary to the Stars

Watching Loni Anderson in 1980 is like watching a great athlete in their prime. Picture Michael Jordan in 1993, except in a tight sundress.

When she walks onto the ship, she is pure va-va-voom.

Still riding the success of WKRP in Cincinnati, Anderson plays a famous movie star who boards the ship hoping to escape the press. When a persistent young admirer begins following her around, she decides to hide in plain sight.

Her solution: a brown wig, oversized glasses, and a British accent that would make Kevin Costner’s Robin Hood blush.

And to also pretend to be her own secretary.

Naturally, the admirer—played by the blandly handsome Charles Frank, portraying a schoolteacher who happens to be extremely farsighted—falls in love with the disguised alter ego.

The deception eventually collapses when Anderson “fires” her secretary persona, prompting Frank’s character to angrily denounce the star. Eventually she reveals the truth, and he somehow finds it within himself to forgive her.

Big surprise.

Julie’s Decision

Cruise Director Julie McCoy finds herself falling for Robert Stack, who plays an “international playboy.”

Despite having recently played Rex Kramer in Airplane! earlier that same year, Stack plays this role completely straight. He is suave, worldly, and impossibly confident.

The age difference between the characters is notable—Stack was 62 in 1980, while Julie McCoy was written as being in her twenties—but Stack sells the romance with considerable charm.

Eventually he proposes marriage.

But after reflection, he decides he is too old for her and stages a fake scene with another woman to push Julie away.

The classic television sacrifice play.

Also, this episode hints to Julie’s search for a husband. Eventually, this will lead to a trip to Australia in the next season, and a two-part episode which features the greatest Love Boat storyline of all time.

The Mongala.

But that is tale for another day.

Gopher and Isaac Buy a Horse/Village People Ride Again

The comedic storyline is the highlight of the episode.

Gopher and Isaac decide to capitalize on the upcoming race by purchasing their own horse, which they name Captain Stubing.

The humor is broad but effective. When the horse’s name is announced, the human Captain Stubing assumes he is being summoned. When the horse appears sick, Doc Bricker gets to deliver the inevitable “healthy as a horse” joke.

Meanwhile, the Village People appear largely as comic relief and musical guests.

By the time they reached the gangplank of the Pacific Princess, disco was already fading and their film Can’t Stop the Music had flopped. But on this episode, you would never know it.

They arrive singing an a cappella version of “In the Navy” and later perform “Magic Night” while the cast smiles and claps enthusiastically.

Their best moment comes during the steeplechase.

After losing a coin toss, Gopher earns the privilege of riding Captain Stubing. The Village People enter their own horse named Magic Night.

When Felipe Rose (the Indian) prepares to mount his horse, he exchanges the following dialogue with the Leather Man:

“I thought Indians rode bareback.”

“I’m not taking off my clothes.”

Soon both Gopher and Felipe lose their horses but continue running the race on foot. As the rest of the riders finish—Allen Ludden beating Robert Stack by a nose—the announcer declares that Felipe wins the footrace by a “feather.”

Captain Stubing the horse is later sold for $200, which coincidentally is the exact amount of damage the animal causes aboard the ship.

As the Village People depart, Felipe trades his headdress for Captain Stubing’s captain hat and declares:

“I’ve always wanted a kinky hat like that.”

S. M. Chase is the author of the supernatural detective novel Midnight Miami, a neon-soaked paranormal mystery set in Miami in 1981.

Midnight Miami is the first installment in The Grits & Gravy Mysteries.

One of my favorite parts of writing Midnight Miami was time traveling back to South Florida in 1981. Because the novel is an urban fantasy mystery, I felt a particular obligation to get the “urban” part right.

If you are going to ask readers to believe in werewolves and paranormal detectives, the streets need to feel authentic.

Some locations were easy to research. Roben Farzad’s Hotel Scarface provided extraordinary detail about the Mutiny at Sailboat Bay, the hotel and nightclub that helped inspire the Babylon Club in the 1983 film Scarface. Other places required more effort: newspaper archives, property records, interviews, and city directories that sometimes contradicted one another.

Here are a few real places that appear in Midnight Miami, arriving May 12, 2026.

Versailles Restaurant, 3555 SW 8th St, Calle Ocho

When I needed a location within Little Havana, the choice quickly became obvious.

“The world’s most famous Cuban restaurant.”

Versailles was founded by Felipe Valls Sr., who fled Cuba in 1960 after Fidel Castro’s Communist revolution. Like many exiles of that first wave, Valls arrived in the United States with little but determination and a refusal to accept what had happened to his homeland. The restaurant he built was not just a business venture. It was an act of defiance.

Opened in 1971, Versailles became more than a restaurant almost immediately. It became a gathering place for Miami’s Cuban exile community. The Cuban community that formed in Miami during the 1960s and 1970s was intensely anti-Communist, shaped by confiscated property, political imprisonment, and forced exile. Versailles became one of the most visible symbols of that spirit. If Havana had been taken, Calle Ocho would not be surrendered.

Inside, it functions as both cafeteria and institution. Generations at the same table, conversations shifting easily between politics, baseball, and business fueled by great Cuban food

Versailles is not nostalgia. It is continuity of the Cuban spirit.

The Tijuana Cat, Unknown address, Washington Avenue

The Turf Pub, 22 Ocean Drive, South Beach, FL

While uncovering information about “the world’s most famous Cuban restaurant” was relatively easy, finding information on gay bars from 1981 was not. Nightclubs in general are not the most stable enterprises, and gay bars in the early 1980s were, for the most part, still underground, making reliable information difficult to find.

I was fortunate to locate a 1982 article from the Miami Herald entitled “Culture Clash in South Beach.” The article discusses changes in Miami due to the large influx of Mariel refugees:

Today most of the Italians, like those at the Villa Luisa, have been replaced by Mariel refugees, many of them gays. Castro exiled a large homosexual community during the boatlift … They go to the Tijuana Cat on Washington Avenue or The Turf Pub on Ocean Drive, a once-popular English-style restaurant that is now a self-described gay club.

My favorite portion of the Miami Herald article, however, was this quote:

“I’d say 85 per cent of the Cuban males down here are gay,” says Bruce Dailey, an American-born gay Black man who lives at the Corsair, described as baby-faced and wearing a black bikini and oversized sombrero (Emphasis mine).

While I was never able to pin down a confirmed street number for the Tijuana Cat, I was able to verify the address of the Turf Pub. Unfortunately, 22 Ocean Drive no longer exists, having disappeared during the construction of the One Ocean Condominium complex.

The legacy of both places continues. The Turf Pub and the Tijuana Cat both appear in Midnight Miami. Inspired in part by Mr. Dailey’s outfit, I created a fictional owner of both clubs, a character who plays a critical role in the conclusion of the story.

For more on the Turf Pub, check out this great interview with Lila Terry, who owned the bar during the early 1980s.

Monty’s Raw Bar, 2550 South Bayshore Drive, Coconut Grove

As I was trying to find a bar in South Florida that provided both the Miami “vibe” and a person to go with it, I was blessed to learn about Monty’s Raw Bar and its founder, Monty Trainer.

Monty’s Raw Bar began in 1969 as Monty’s Bayshore Inn, founded by Monty Trainer on a small parcel of waterfront property in Coconut Grove. What started as a modest seafood spot quickly became a local favorite for its casual charm, fresh Gulf oysters, and unbeatable views of Biscayne Bay. Patrons discovered an atmosphere that was at once laid-back and somehow emblematic of South Florida’s restless energy: open-air seating under swaying palms, cold beer served without pretension, and the soundtrack of boat horns and harbor breezes.

As the years went on, Monty’s became more than a bar. It became a destination. Locals, tourists, boaters, and anyone who liked the feeling of sun on their shoulders and salt in the air found themselves at Monty’s. In an era before Coconut Grove became a high-end dining scene, Monty’s existed as a bridge between the Grove’s bohemian past and its future prosperity. It was where people compared fishing stories, sealed business deals over oysters, and measured their day by the tide.

The only thing more legendary than this Coconut Grove institution is its founder — Monty Trainer.

Monty Trainer was not just a bar owner; he was an entrepreneurial force whose ambitions often matched his personality. Born and raised in Florida, Trainer’s instincts were rooted in the rhythms of the Sunshine State. He understood people who liked to linger, talk loud, and drink cold while watching the water move. With Monty’s Raw Bar as his flagship, he expanded into other hospitality ventures, most notably Monty’s Bayshore Inn, which became known for its music, social gatherings, and sometimes raucous reputation.

Trainer’s career was a mix of big wins and headline-grabbing struggles. In the 1970s and 1980s, Monty’s Raw Bar was a hub of social life in the Grove. It attracted locals and visitors alike for its easy vibe and collections of characters who seemed to fit only in that corner of South Florida. But Trainer’s ambitions sometimes exceeded what purely good luck or hard work could sustain. In the 1990s and early 2000s, he ran into legal and financial difficulties, including tax issues that forced him to restructure parts of his business and face the consequences of rapid expansion without adequate oversight.

The falls were very public. But so were his comebacks.

As chronicled in a 2025 profile, Trainer’s “second act” was rooted in reinvention rather than retreat. After the setbacks, he leaned into community connections and his deep knowledge of the local scene to return to what had always worked best for him: places where people gather. He refocused on Monty’s Raw Bar itself, reconnecting with patrons and reestablishing the bar as a locus of Grove life. The story of Monty’s second act is a testament to resilience — not in spite of mistakes, but because of them. Trainer walked back through the doors of the place he built, not as a cautionary tale but as proof that Miami could absorb failure and still find something worth returning to.

And that, in many ways, is Miami.

Miami is a place where people remade themselves when what they had once worked was no longer enough. Felipe Valls Sr., who fled Cuba in 1960 after Fidel Castro’s revolution, turned exile into a community institution at Versailles Restaurant. In places like the Tijuana Cat and the Turf Pub, people created room to reinvent themselves, even if that reinvention came in the form of black bikinis and oversized sombreros. In each case, Miami was a canvas for reinvention, for survival, for second acts that most cities would never permit.

That is part of the city’s enduring allure: people arrive broken, displaced, or undone, and Miami does not ask them to conform. It asks them only to show up. Some find stability. Some find chaos. Some find laughter where others see contradiction. But they all become part of the story.

And in Midnight Miami, those stories matter as much as the myth.

Release Date: May 12, 2026

Available for pre-order at Amazon and Barnes & Noble

The Thursday Murder Club meets Dungeon Crawler Carl and Jack Reacher—with a supernatural twist in neon-soaked 1980s Miami.

Midnight Miami is a supernatural detective novel by S. M. Chase set in neon-lit South Florida during the turbulent summer of 1981.

Book Summary

Grits McCoy, a retired NASCAR driver, and Gravy Watkins, a former NFL superstar, are best friends and Miami’s go-to celebrity detectives.

By day, they run the Stone Detective Agency with their partner Eleanor Stone.

By night, they hunt creatures most people don’t believe exist.

In the summer of 1981, a series of brutal murders point to Miami’s hottest nightclub—Midnight Miami—and an impossible suspect: a werewolf. With a full moon approaching, Grits and Gravy plunge into a world of nightclubs, mafia bosses, cocaine cowboys, and monsters hiding in plain sight—and uncover an ancient prophecy tied to the killings, one that threatens not just Miami, but the fate of the world itself.

As the full moon rises, Grits and Gravy must confront a killer whose motives are as mysterious as the powers they wield, in a climactic showdown at the Midnight Miami—just in time to grab a cheeseburger before the drive-thru closes.

Packed with ’80s action-movie energy, classic monsters, and real Miami locations, Midnight Miami delivers high-stakes mystery with offbeat humor.

Setting: 1981 Miami

Midnight Miami is grounded in real historical detail from 1981 Miami:

• South Beach nightlife

• Cocaine cowboy era crime

• Political and economic tension

• Iconic coastal settings

The novel blends authentic Miami history with supernatural horror and mythological themes.

Main Characters

Grits McCoy – Former NASCAR driver turned private investigator.

Gravy Watkins – Ex-NFL superstar with a complicated past.

Eleanor Stone – Strategic mind behind the Stone Detective Agency.

Together, they confront threats most people don’t believe exist.

Genre & Keywords

• Supernatural detective novel

• 1980s Miami thriller

• Werewolf mystery

• Urban fantasy crime fiction

• Paranormal investigators

• Action comedy fantasy

Series Information

Midnight Miami is Book One in the Grits & Gravy Mysteries series by S. M. Chase.

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S. M. Chase – Author of Midnight Miami

S. M. Chase is the author of the supernatural detective novel Midnight Miami, a neon-soaked paranormal mystery set in 1981 Miami. Blending crime fiction, urban fantasy, and action-driven humor, S. M. Chase creates fast-paced stories where hardboiled detectives collide with ancient myth and modern vice.

Midnight Miami marks the debut of the The Grits & Gravy Mysteries series.

About S. M. Chase

S. M. Chase writes character-driven supernatural thrillers rooted in real historical settings. Drawing inspiration from classic Miami crime fiction, 1980s action cinema, and mythological folklore, Chase’s fiction explores the collision between ambition, loyalty, corruption, and the unseen forces lurking beneath the surface of American cities.

Set against the backdrop of 1981 Miami — the era of cocaine cowboys, neon nightclubs, and political upheaval — Midnight Miami introduces readers to a world where werewolves stalk South Beach and ancient prophecies threaten the modern world.

Chase’s work combines:

• Supernatural detective fiction

• Urban fantasy mystery

• 1980s Miami crime realism

• Mythology-infused thrillers

The Grits & Gravy Mysteries

The Grits & Gravy Mysteries series follows two unlikely private investigators:

• Grits McCoy, a retired NASCAR driver

• Gravy Watkins, a former NFL superstar

Operating out of Miami in the summer of 1981, they investigate crimes that most people refuse to believe are real.

At the center of their first case: a string of brutal murders connected to Miami’s most notorious nightclub — and an impossible suspect.

About

Midnight Miami

Midnight Miami by S. M. Chase is a supernatural detective novel set in neon-soaked 1981 Miami.

Release Date: May 12, 2026

Available for pre-order at Amazon and Barnes & Noble

Genres:

• Paranormal Mystery

• Supernatural Detective Fiction

• Urban Fantasy

• Action-Comedy Thriller

The novel blends real historical Miami locations with mythological elements, grounding supernatural horror in an authentic 1981 crime landscape.

Media & Contact

For media inquiries, ARC requests, or collaboration opportunities related to Midnight Miami by S. M. Chase, please subscribe or contact at contact@smchase.com.

Leading up to the release of my debut novel—Midnight Miami, arriving this May 12, 2026— I will discuss some of my favorite noir/crime novels set in Miami.

And I did not save the best for last. - SMC

Rum Punch will always hold a special place in my heart. It was not only my introduction to audiobooks, but also my first real introduction to Elmore Leonard.

Elmore Leonard (1925–2013) began his writing career in the 1950s, initially publishing Western novels and short stories before transitioning into crime fiction in the late 1960s. Over the next several decades, Leonard became one of the most influential crime writers in American literature, known for his stripped-down prose, razor-sharp dialogue, and refusal to romanticize criminals or law enforcement. His writing emphasized character voice over exposition, allowing stories to unfold through conversation and behavior rather than authorial explanation.

Leonard’s connection to South Florida crime fiction strengthened in the 1980s, when he began setting many of his novels in Miami and the surrounding region. Books like LaBrava, Glitz, Maximum Bob, and Rum Punch helped define the literary version of Florida as a place where crime, absurdity, desperation, and dark humor coexist. Leonard treated South Florida not as an exotic setting, but as a working ecosystem of hustlers, cops, retirees, smugglers, and people one bad decision away from disaster. That tone would go on to influence generations of crime writers, filmmakers, and television creators.

I wish I had a more noble way to say that I discovered Leonard, but the truth is I owe it to Quentin Tarantino. For his follow-up to Pulp Fiction, Tarantino chose to adapt Rum Punch into what became both a crime film and a love letter to Pam Grier: Jackie Brown.

The movie is fairly faithful to the book, with a few changes. In the novel, the main character is Jackie Burke, a white woman in her mid-40s. In the film, she becomes Jackie Brown, portrayed by Pam Grier in a career-redefining comeback performance. The biggest change is the setting, with Southern California replacing South Florida.

Published in 1992, Rum Punch follows Jackie Burke, a flight attendant supplementing her income by smuggling cash for a small-time arms dealer. When she is caught by federal agents, she is forced into a negotiation for her freedom that becomes a layered double-cross involving criminals, law enforcement, and Jackie’s survival instincts. Like many Leonard novels, the story is less about plot twists and more about character collisions, where each person believes they are the smartest person in the room until proven otherwise.

South Florida in Rum Punch functions as more than backdrop. Leonard uses Miami and the surrounding region as a pressure cooker where money moves quickly, loyalties shift constantly, and people operate in the gray space between legitimate business and criminal opportunity. The geography of South Florida, with its ports, tourism economy, transient populations, and proximity to international trade routes, naturally supports Leonard’s style of crime storytelling. It is a world where people do not necessarily see themselves as criminals. They see themselves as practical.

And as the people in Leonard’s world see themselves as practical, they also allow themselves to be seen. The criminals in Leonard’s world often hide in plain sight.

Jackie Burke does not operate from shadows or safe houses. She works a public-facing job as a flight attendant, moving through airports, hotels, and commercial spaces where thousands of legitimate travelers pass every day. Her smuggling operation depends on normalcy. She succeeds because she looks like someone doing a job, not someone committing a crime.

The same applies to Ordell Robbie, who operates as a small-time arms dealer but presents himself as a businessman. He conducts transactions through normal social interactions, retail spaces, and casual meetings rather than underground networks. Max Cherry, the bail bondsman, exists even closer to legitimacy. He is licensed, visible, and publicly accountable, yet operates in constant proximity to criminal ecosystems. Leonard’s criminals are not isolated from society. They are embedded in it.

Even secondary characters follow this pattern. People meet in bars, offices, parking lots, and living rooms. Deals happen during normal conversations. Money moves through routine channels. Violence, when it happens, feels abrupt because it interrupts ordinary environments. Leonard’s world is not one where criminals hide. It is one where they blend.

Elmore Leonard understood something fundamental about crime in places like South Florida. Most people involved in crime do not see themselves as villains. They see themselves as workers solving financial problems. They use the same infrastructure as everyone else. Airports. Banks. Restaurants. Retail stores. The difference is not where they exist. It is what they are willing to do inside those spaces.

For me, discovering Rum Punch was more than discovering a novel. It was discovering a way to look at crime stories. Leonard showed that tension does not come from how dark a story is. It comes from how normal it feels. Crime becomes more unsettling when it happens in daylight, in familiar places, carried out by people who believe they are making rational decisions.

And if you want to understand crime fiction that still feels modern thirty years later, start with Elmore Leonard. Not because he made crime glamorous. Because he made it recognizable.

When most people think of Miami in the 1980s, they are usually thinking about a version of the city that did not fully exist yet.

They’re thinking about Miami Vice.

Flamingos. Ferraris. Hot pink and pastel blue. Black t-shirts under white sport coats. Loafers without socks. Jan Hammer’s synthesizer telling you something dramatic is about to happen.

But when I chose Miami as the location for the first Grits & Gravy Mystery (Midnight Miami, coming May 12, 2026), I was not interested in that Miami.

I wanted the city that existed before the myth became profitable.

The Miami of 1981. The year Time Magazine called the city “Paradise Lost.” A year with 621 murders, nearly double the total from two years earlier. A year when the Medical Examiner had to rent a refrigerated truck to handle overflow.

And somehow, despite all of that, the city did not collapse. It adapted. It survived. It reinvented itself.

To me, the real story of 1981 Miami starts before the 1980s.

It starts in 1979, with the Dadeland Massacre.

On July 11, 1979, two heavily armed gunmen entered the Dadeland Mall liquor store in broad daylight and opened fire on rival drug traffickers inside. The attackers used shotguns and automatic weapons in a crowded suburban shopping center during normal business hours. Two people were killed and two were wounded. What shocked investigators was not only the violence, but the brazenness. This was not a back alley execution. This was organized, public, and meant to send a message.

The Dadeland Massacre marked a turning point for Miami law enforcement and public perception. It showed that international drug trafficking organizations were willing to conduct open warfare on American soil. It forced local and federal agencies to recognize that Miami was no longer just a transit point for drugs. It had become a battlefield. The event is widely viewed by historians and law enforcement as the moment the cocaine cowboy era truly began.

After Dadeland, the reign of cocaine cowboys had begun.

By 1981, Miami had become the primary entry point for cocaine entering the United States from Colombia. Smuggling networks operated through speedboats, private aircraft, cargo shipments, and complex money laundering systems. Colombian cartels established distribution hubs across South Florida, working with local criminal organizations to move product inland. The sheer volume of money entering the city overwhelmed existing financial and law enforcement systems.

Violence escalated accordingly. Contract killings, car bombings, and public shootings became disturbingly common. In 1979, Colombian trafficker Alfredo Duran was murdered in Miami in what investigators tied to cartel disputes. In the early 1980s, drug-related assassinations were frequently carried out in parking lots, restaurants, and residential neighborhoods. One particularly notorious tactic involved motorcycle drive-by shootings using automatic weapons. These attacks were meant not just to eliminate targets but to intimidate entire networks.

And if this was not enough, Fidel Castro contributed to the chaos.

In April 1980, following internal tensions and diplomatic pressure, Cuban leader Fidel Castro announced that anyone who wanted to leave Cuba could depart from the port of Mariel. Over the next six months, approximately 125,000 Cubans arrived in South Florida. Many were families seeking opportunity and freedom from economic hardship and political repression. The scale and speed of the migration overwhelmed federal and local infrastructure.

However, Castro also used the opportunity to release individuals from prisons and psychiatric institutions. U.S. authorities later confirmed that among legitimate refugees were individuals with criminal histories and serious mental health conditions. This complicated resettlement efforts and fueled public fear and political tension throughout South Florida.

The sudden population increase placed immediate pressure on housing, employment, and social services. While the vast majority of Mariel refugees were law-abiding and hardworking, law enforcement agencies did document increases in certain categories of crime tied to individuals with prior criminal histories. Combined with escalating drug violence, the result was a perception in 1981 that Miami was spiraling out of control.

So how did the Miami of 1981 not only weather this storm, but move to even greater heights? The answer surprisingly starts with cocaine.

Illicit drug money flowed into Miami’s financial system at unprecedented levels during the late 1970s and early 1980s. Investigations later revealed that billions of dollars were laundered through local banks, real estate purchases, and shell corporations. While illegal and corrosive in the long term, the immediate effect was massive liquidity. Construction boomed. Luxury goods sales exploded. Banks posted record deposits. Some South Florida financial institutions grew dramatically due to capital inflows regulators struggled to trace or control.

Miami eventually began to recover through a combination of aggressive law enforcement, federal prosecutions, banking reforms, and economic diversification. Specialized drug enforcement task forces, expanded federal RICO prosecutions, and stronger international cooperation gradually weakened cartel operations inside the city. By the late 1980s and early 1990s, Miami was transitioning from a crime headline to a global financial and cultural hub.

At the same time, Miami diversified its economy into tourism, international banking, trade with Latin America, and real estate development. The city leveraged its geographic position and cultural diversity to become a gateway between North and South America. Crime did not disappear, but the city learned how to survive alongside global attention and economic transformation.

In the end, a city is only as good as the people that make it up.

In the late 1970s and early 1980s, the Miami Design Preservation League, led by Barbara Baer Capitman, played a crucial role in saving the historic Art Deco architecture of South Beach. At the time, many buildings were deteriorating and slated for demolition. Capitman and her colleagues pushed for historic preservation status, public awareness campaigns, and zoning protections. Their work preserved what would later become one of the most recognizable architectural districts in the world and laid the foundation for South Beach’s cultural and tourism renaissance.

The Cuban community also played a major role in Miami’s post-1981 recovery and growth. Cuban entrepreneurs built businesses across industries ranging from banking to hospitality to media. Institutions like Calle Ocho’s commercial corridor and the expansion of Spanish language broadcasting helped establish Miami as a hemispheric cultural capital. Cuban American political leaders and business owners helped stabilize neighborhoods, build economic networks, and strengthen Miami’s identity as an international city.

In 1981, South Beach real estate was relatively inexpensive and often declining in value. Many Art Deco buildings were aging, undermaintained, and viewed as relics rather than assets. As one concrete example: a major Ocean Drive property later associated with the district’s revival (then operating as the apartment-house Amsterdam Palace) was purchased in 1980 for $600,000. Today the former Amsterdam Palace (now the Villa Casa Casuarina) is commonly estimated in the tens of millions, with online valuation models ranging from roughly $37 million to $87 million. In 2025, South Beach real estate ranks among the most expensive in the Unite

Miami in 1981 was not glamorous. It was volatile. Complicated. Frequently frightening. But it was also resilient in a way that is difficult to explain unless you lived inside it.

The city absorbed waves of migration, global crime pressure, economic shocks, and cultural change, often at the same time. And somehow it kept moving forward, sometimes by design, sometimes by accident, sometimes because there was simply no other choice.

The neon version of Miami that most people remember did not appear out of nowhere. It was built on top of a city that had already survived more than most American cities ever experience.

That is the Miami that interested me when I wrote Midnight Miami. Not the postcard. Not the television version. The place that existed when the future still felt uncertain and everyone was improvising.

And if you want to understand how a city becomes a legend, you start by looking at the years when it almost wasn’t one.

FOR FURTHER READING, I highly recommend The Year of Dangerous Days: Riots, Refugees, and Cocaine in Miami 1980 by Nicholas Griffin for a better understanding of pre-Miami Vice South Florida.

In 1981, television was still dominated by the Big Three Networks: ABC, CBS, and NBC. Fox was five years away from existing. No streaming. VCRs were expensive novelties.

And no offense to PBS, and thank you for Sesame Street and Mister Rogers, but if you wanted to watch TV, you watched something on the Big Three.

What does this have to do with Grits McCoy and Gravy Watkins, the retired pro athletes turned paranormal detectives who are the protagonists of my first novel Midnight Miami?

Since you asked, I will tell you.

Midnight Miami, the first Grits & Gravy Mystery novel, arriving May 12, 2026, is set in Miami in the summer of 1981. In 1981, television functioned as more than entertainment. It gave people a common language. On any given night, a large portion of the population watched the same program. It created shared experience.

In 1981, there were roughly 79.9 million TV households. Today, there are approximately 125.5 million.

In 2024–2025, CBS’s top show, Tracker, averaged 17.44 million viewers per episode, only slightly more than the #15 show in 1981, Happy Days, at 16.62 million. When adjusted for household growth, Tracker’s audience is roughly equivalent to 8.8 million viewers in 1981.

If you were a second grade boy and C.H.i.P.s was on Sunday night, you could assume your friends watched it. Monday morning at school would confirm it.

The pop culture of 1981 becomes part of the language of the world of Grits & Gravy. Especially one show that also reflects my personal preferences. So here is a primer on some of the great TV shows of 1981, along with Nielsen rank and average viewership.

Magnum, P.I. (#15 – 16.78 million)

Magnum, P.I. debuted in 1980 and followed Thomas Magnum, a Vietnam veteran working as a private investigator in Hawaii while living on the estate of a mysterious novelist. The show blended detective stories with action, humor, and surprising character depth, particularly in Magnum’s friendships with fellow veterans Rick and T.C. At a time when many detective shows leaned hard into formula, Magnum felt warm, personality-driven, and grounded in emotional stakes. It quietly explored post-Vietnam themes of loyalty, trauma, and identity without ever feeling heavy.

I rewatched a few episodes a few months back. They hold up well, though I still find Tom Selleck’s habit of tucking his Hawaiian shirt into his jeans deeply confusing. In the end, it is a solid, well-written detective show that is still worth watching.

But know this. If you were conceived in the 1980s, your mother was probably picturing this image.

C.H.i.P.s (#25 – 15.50 million)

C.H.i.P.s followed California Highway Patrol officers Jon Baker and Frank “Ponch” Poncherello as they patrolled Los Angeles freeways dealing with everything from routine traffic stops to organized crime and elaborate vehicular chaos. The show leaned heavily into practical stunt work, which makes it visually impressive even today. It also captured a version of Southern California that felt wide open, bright, and slightly lawless in that uniquely late-1970s and early-1980s way.

This show was a childhood staple, up there with Dukes of Hazzard. My brother and I spent entire summers on bike missions pretending to be Ponch and Jon.

I have been binge-watching these on Amazon Prime. They are incredible time capsules of Southern California in the late 70s and early 80s. Producers used Los Angeles freeways that had been built but were not yet open to the public, which meant real sunlight, real asphalt, and no digital effects. It also meant every episode could include absurd car crashes. What would now be done with CGI was once accomplished by stuntmen risking their necks and destroying a truly impressive number of cars.

How do they hold up? That depends on your tolerance for cheese.For example, an episode from Season 5 (Trained for Trouble) described by Amazon thusly:

“Ponch and Jon find themselves against an unusual band of robbery suspects-- a trained dog, monkeys and a hawk. Ponch’s look-alike happens to be a popular male stripper.”

Make of that what you will.

More to come on C.H.I.P.s in future posts.

Diff’rent Strokes (#19 – 16.54 million)

Diff’rent Strokes followed two Harlem brothers, Arnold and Willis Jackson, who are adopted by wealthy businessman Phillip Drummond and move into his Manhattan penthouse. The show mixed traditional sitcom humor with occasional attempts to address class, race, and childhood vulnerability. At its best, the show worked because of character chemistry, especially Gary Coleman’s performance as Arnold.

The show is unfortunately remembered more for the later lives of its young stars. Rewatching it, Gary Coleman does not get enough credit as a performer. You are pulled toward him every time he appears on screen.

Like many sitcoms, the premise is often absurd and everything resolves in 22 minutes. But the show was built for families and children nearly fifty years ago, so I am not inclined to overthink it.

And yes. You want to hear him say the thing.

The Love Boat (#5 – 19.42 million)

While writing Midnight Miami, I realized something simple and wonderful.

Your characters like whatever you want them to like.

For example, Grits McCoy and Gravy Watkins share a trait with me.

Their favorite television show is The Love Boat.

The Love Boat followed weekly passengers and crew aboard a luxury cruise ship, blending romantic storylines, celebrity guest appearances, and light comedy. It functioned as both escapist fantasy and cultural snapshot, offering viewers a rotating cast of familiar actors in stories about love, mistakes, and second chances. The formula was simple, reliable, and comforting, which is exactly why it worked in an era when television functioned as shared national background noise.

My bond with The Love Boat formed in college. My roommate and I had a nightly ritual.

5 PM to 6 PM. Watch The Love Boat.

6 PM to 7 PM. Dinner.

Corny? Maybe. Cheesy? Absolutely. Best theme song ever? Yes.

BONUS — Every Guest Ever on The Love Boat

If you were a working actor in the late 1970s or early 1980s, you probably appeared on The Love Boat at least once. The guest list reads like a time capsule of American entertainment. Film legends, television regulars, musicians, athletes, and future stars rotated through constantly. For viewers, it created the sense that everyone existed in the same shared television universe. For historians, it provides a snapshot of who mattered, who was rising, and who was transitioning at any given moment in pop culture history.

Television in 1981 did something that is nearly impossible today. It synchronized experience. Millions of people laughed at the same jokes, heard the same theme songs, and absorbed the same cultural shorthand at the same time.

That is why television matters in Midnight Miami. It is not nostalgia. It is environmental storytelling. It is background radiation for how people thought, what they expected from life, and what they believed heroes were supposed to look like.

Before streaming fractured audiences into thousands of microcultures, television was one of the last places where America experienced something together. The shows were not always sophisticated. They were not always realistic. But they were shared.

And if you want to understand how people thought in 1981, start with what they watched when they turned the dial to one of three choices.

I thought that I was a good father. Then my daughter rocked my world with six words.

“I’ve never been to Burger King.”

As a parent, you strive to have your children experience the things that you enjoyed as a child. As part of my parenting process, I have ensured that my daughter has consistently received a foundational entertainment diet of Looney Tunes, The Muppets, and Star Wars, with dessert provided by some of my favorite ’70s and ’80s sugary pablum. From classics like Smokey and the Bandit, Airplane!, and Flash Gordon to less regarded (by some) fare like Rad, Weekend at Bernie’s, and any Shaw Brothers kung-fu movies featuring the Venom Mob.

Semi-related, a favorite party trick of mine was to have my daughter, in her younger years, perform a spoken-word recitation of the movie trailer for Gymkata. For some reason, as a teenager, she doesn’t like to do this as much now. Big surprise.

Sharing childhood favorites from my actual diet has also been a major tenet of my rearing process. Mostly cheeseburgers, of course. I had deluded myself into thinking that I had been equally successful, until the day my world came crashing down.

During a discussion where I was trying to convince her that in my youth 1) everyone ate at McDonald’s and 2) McDonald’s food was actually good, she blurted out a fact that caused me to question the greatness of my parenting.

She had never been to Burger King.

1981 Whopper advertisement

In my defense, we live in the Golden Age of Cheeseburgers. Shake Shack. Cook Out. The simple but delicious innovation of the smash burger. But facts are facts. She hadn’t been there, and frankly, I couldn’t remember the last time I had visited the Home of the Whopper myself.

And in case you’re wondering, “What does this have to do with Midnight Miami?”, I’ll tell you. The characters of Grits McCoy and Gravy Watkins and the world of Midnight Miami are built upon what I, as a six-year-old in 1981, thought was cool. Race cars. Football players. Motorcycles. Good guys fighting bad guys who were unambiguously evil. And milkshakes and cheeseburgers.

But another reason that Burger King features so prominently in Midnight Miami is a fact that I did not know until I began my research of Miami for the novel.

The Magic City is truly the Home of the Whopper.

Burger King’s story begins in 1953, not as a global empire but as a modest Florida experiment. In Jacksonville, two entrepreneurs opened a small chain called Insta-Burger King, built around a futuristic-sounding Insta-Broiler machine that promised speed, consistency, and modernity. It was very much a product of postwar optimism: fast food as efficiency, technology as comfort, and hamburgers as an expression of progress rather than indulgence.

The company’s real transformation began a year later in Miami, when James McLamore and David Edgerton acquired the struggling operation’s South Florida franchise rights. They saw opportunity where others saw limitation, and by 1959 they had purchased the entire company outright. Miami became the nerve center of Burger King’s rebirth. It was here that the Insta-Broiler was replaced by the flame broiler, a small but crucial innovation that gave Burger King its defining sensory edge. It was also here that the Whopper was introduced—a larger, messier, more confident burger that felt distinctly Floridian in its excess.

Throughout the 1960s and 1970s, as Burger King expanded nationally and internationally, Miami remained its corporate home. The city’s position as a crossroads—between Latin America and the rest of the United States, between old money and new ambition—mirrored the company’s own identity. Burger King wasn’t selling nostalgia. It was selling forward motion. The brand’s advertising leaned into individual choice (“Have It Your Way”), a slogan that fit neatly into a city built on reinvention and second chances.

By 1981, Burger King was no longer just a fast-food chain with a Miami address. It was one of the city’s most visible corporate success stories, employing thousands, hosting executives from around the world, and embedding itself into the daily rhythms of South Florida life. For people working odd hours, chasing deals, or simply killing time in the heat, Burger King wasn’t a destination. It was a constant. And constants matter when you’re trying to make sense of a place.

Last summer, I finally rectified my greatest failing as a parent. I took my daughter to Burger King. We each got a Whopper, fries, and a drink.

And what did we think?

We were both surprisingly impressed. In a word, it was delicious.

While it was not surprising that the burger itself was good (the flame-broiling process does give their patties a fresh-off-the-grill flavor and feel), what really surprised us was the freshness of the toppings. The lettuce, tomatoes, and onions were ripe and juicy. The last burger I had from Burger King’s biggest competitor tasted like it came from a 3-D printer; the Whopper feels like someone made it special just for you.

Burger King endures not because it’s trendy, or artisanal, or particularly interested in impressing anyone. It endures because it understands something fundamental about how people move through cities. Sometimes you don’t want an experience. You want a known quantity. A place where the lights are on, the rules are simple, and nobody asks why you’re there.

That was true in Miami in 1981, and it’s still true now. In a city that was changing faster than anyone could keep up with, Burger King offered a small, dependable pause—five minutes of heat, salt, and certainty before stepping back into the noise. That’s why it belongs in Midnight Miami. Not as a joke. Not as nostalgia. But as part of the infrastructure of everyday life.

And as for my daughter? She’s been back since. Not because she had to. Because sometimes, even in the Golden Age of Cheeseburgers, it’s worth visiting the place that helped build the mythology in the first place.

FOR FURTHER READING, I highly recommend Miami-based food blogger, historian, and writer Sef Gonzalez’s blog Burger Beast, including this great article on the history of Burger King.

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Hi. I’m S. M. Chase.

Which isn’t my real name. But will look good on a book cover.

This is where I’ll be sharing updates on my debut novel, arriving this May 12, 2026, Midnight Miami — an urban fantasy supernatural mystery, and the first book in a planned series featuring Grits & Gravy.

Meet Grits McCoy, retired NASCAR driver, and Gravy Watkins, former NFL Superstar.

They’re best friends. Celebrity detectives. And by night, Miami’s go-to problem solvers for things that shouldn’t exist — vampires, undead street walkers, and the occasional Easter Bunny.

In the summer of 1981, a series of brutal murders point to Miami’s hottest nightclub — Midnight Miami — and an impossible suspect: a werewolf. With a full moon approaching and an ancient prophecy in play, Grits and Gravy plunge into a world of nightclubs, mafia bosses, cocaine cowboys, and monsters hiding in plain sight.

Packed with ‘80s action-movie tropes, classic monsters, and real Miami locations, Midnight Miami blends high-stakes mystery with offbeat humor.

Subscribe for behind-the-scenes research, Miami history, classic monster mayhem, cover reveals, advance reader opportunities, and launch updates as the series comes to life in May 2026.

Thank you!

— S. M. Chase