Tourist Season Book

Three and a half stars.

Just like Donovan used to sit at the feet of Bob Dylan, Carl Hiaasen will forever be an Elmore Leonard wannabe. Now, this isn't a bad thing. If your child wants to grow up to be president, you'd want them to model themselves after Abe Lincoln and not Warren Harding or Franklin Pierce.

The novel, Hiaasen's first, is pretty good, but you can see Hiaasen measuring himself up against the master. Fortunately, here he sticks with what he knows best: the newspaper business, civilization encroaching upon the everglades and Southern Florida. He keeps it relatively simple: decently drawn characters, fairly riveting plot, and generous dollops of humor. It wasn't until later novels that Hiaasen heavily embraced (for good or ill) his quirky nature. Also: his future attempts at female leads in the other books I've read reveal a writer uncomfortable with or unable to write from the opposite gender's point-of-view. In this one, he plays it safe; he doesn't try to write from a woman's perspective - it's a testosterone fest.

Are Floridians this loopy? Is it the inhalation of swamp gas drifting from the everglades? Is there something in the Gulf water? Is it some sort of Seminole curse? I have a few in-laws who live there and my wife has friends who are long-time Flordia residents, so there is some empirical and personal evidence to support this whole idiosyncratic query. * Plus, this is a state that reveres Jimmy Buffett and when he dies, Florida will probably have him stuffed and put on display. **

Eccentric Florida literature has become a mini-genre unto itself, Goodreads recommended scores of books of this type. Why Florida? Why not Delaware, South Dakota or Wyoming?

*My Goodreads friends from Florida, of course, are the exceptions.

** I say, why wait, do it now.