Posner, who often isn't breaking news but who certainly refreshes memories, writes that Jerry Powers, former publisher of Ocean Drive magazine, was indicted in '93 for not filing income tax returns -- and ``struck a clandestine deal with prosecutors: If they agreed to no jail time on the tax charges and complete immunity for anything else, he would deliver Peter Max [the artist for whom Powers served as business manager] for tax fraud.''

Posner also reminds that in the early 1990s, Lee Brian Schrager, founder and director of the South Beach Wine & Food Festival, was charged with grand theft and insurance fraud after he claimed artworks were stolen from his apartment.

But Schrager's early missteps are child's play compared with some of the transgressions made by other Miami Beach players. The index for the 455-page tome (a relatively quick read because it offers the facts like machine-gun fire and doesn't waste much time taking philosophical steps back) looks like a who's who of locals indicted, arrested or slammed somehow for their greed and misdeeds.

``People in Miami have thinner skins than I imagined,'' says Posner, who lives with his wife, also a writer, in a mid-rise building south of Fifth Street. ``I would have loved to publish a book that made everybody happy, but my job is to report it as I find it.''

In fact, the Posners are cheerleaders for Miami Beach. They're in love with their walkable ``village life'' and they reject the snooty New York contention that the town is vacuous.

``I have met the most cerebral bunch of people here,'' says Trisha, she of the punk rock-meets-schoolgirl aesthetic.

The Posners may be ferocious in their research, but they come off as affable and easygoing -- and for a couple married 25 years, they're particularly sweet to each other.

``Trish is my secret weapon,'' says Posner, who with her help has taken on Mengele, Motown and the assassination of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. in other books. ``We do every interview with subjects together. She makes people feel more comfortable. And she always asks the questions I forget to ask.''

About four years ago, the Posners, who moved to the Beach from New York in 2001, were gearing up to start their next book project: an investigation into Vatican finances.

INVITATION TO DINNER

But then they got a dinner invitation from legendary Miami Herald editor Gene Miller, who (long before the CSI days) won two Pulitzer Prizes for stories that freed inmates who had been wrongly accused of murder.

``Miller called me up and said that he was a big fan of Case Closed,'' Posner says. ``He said he wanted to introduce me to some of the `young tigers' at The Miami Herald. We went to Joe's Stone Crab. He came in and said, `Sorry I'm late. I was writing my own obituary.' He died just a few months later. He invited Edna Buchanan, Alberto Ibargüen. The one guy who couldn't make it was Glenn Garvin.''

Miller regaled the Posners with tales about colorful, corrupt South Florida. It seems the Vatican's dirt paled. And so was born Miami Babylon, which should probably be called Miami Beach Babylon, because the book steers clear of the mainland to tell the story of the ``inhospitable swampland'' that grew, amid shady real-estate deals and all sorts of shenanigans, into the slick, high-rise choked, international hotspot it is today.