Reviews for Tourist Season

The average rating for Tourist Season based on 2 reviews is 3.5 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2017-03-11 00:00:00 Matt Paynton Reading this for my book club and, while I have read a few Hiaasen books before, I have always wanted to go back and start at the beginning. Hiaasen has a unique style that I think is easy to either love or hate. For me, it is very odd and unrealistic, but it adds a nice bit of crazy humor to the story. In this novel, it took me about 1/3 of the way to get used to the style. In the end, I liked the story and the style quite a bit. Despite being odd, it was also very touching at points; heroes you want to cheer for and tragic villains you kinda feel sorry for. I will leave you with images of 1980s Miami - this is what I pictured the whole time:

Review # 2 was written on 2013-04-08 00:00:00 Serena Sweet 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.