Tattoo Blues

This book is preposterously fun! The author continues to introduce the wonderfully eccentric characters -- it's impossible to get bored and altho the end is somewhat predictable (reason for 4 and not 5 stars), it is enjoyable, completely angst free, entertaining and leaves one feeling happy -- not a bad deal. Anxious to read more from this funny guy.

I thoroughly enjoyed the book. Mix a hip shooting group of Florida islanders into a lazy island setting with apparitions and tarnished journalists and sooth saying tattoo masters, throw in a sea monster and a pirate or two and a flatulent manatee, and you got exactly the book I want to read as I lie in the sand and feel the sun on my face. It's the next best thing to a frozen drink at sunset. Not as psychotic as Tim Dorsey's creations, or quite as eco-conscious as Hiassen's, the book is a well-written little adventure that's just plain fun!

Cedar Key is a small self contained place which has been undiscovered by developers and where nothing much ever happens. When Desiree Dean, a rich college student who left home to live her own life, not the one that is expected by her father. She decides to get a tattoo at Pimlico Phil?s tattoo parlor and she believes she?s getting one that says Golden Dragon but at the strip where she works as a hostess dressed up in a dragon costume, she learns the tattoo means ?with hot sauce?.She goes over to Phil?s in costume and accidentally sets fire to the place. Both she and Phil disappear and a story in a Florida paper talks about the incident. Robin Chanterelles of the tabloid The Weekly Alarm is sent down to investigate. She becomes involved in the fight to save Cedar Key from a developer who wants a referendum to get the land he owns rezoned so he can build a casino which would destroy the uniqueness of the island.This zany tale is filled with lots of off beat humor and eccentric characters that make the meandering storyline somehow always come back to the main theme of saving the island from those who would exploit it. Michael McClelland has an original and refreshing writing style that will appeal to the reader who likes to read something different on occasion. The author has the talent to put people in impossible situations and have them find a way to do what is right even if it costs them a boat load of money.Harriet Klausner