Tourist Season

Hiaasen is a GENIUS! Tourist Season was my first Hiassen book, and it was a beautiful start to my Hiassen reading rage. Since Tourist Season, I've read 3 more by C.H., and I'm not done yet.Carl Hiaasen's style has always surprised me. Each one of his stories begins with what seems like many many separate, totally independent stories. Somehow, within a few hundred pages, each one of those stories become closely tied with every other one. Tourist Season had me laughing hysterically, more than any other Hiaasen book I think. Being a South Floridian, I've also traveled to most of the places described in this and other books. I find his depiction of the South Florida ecosystems splendid. Tourist Season especially evokes a genuine concern for the loss of Florida's natural land, and the final scene in the book is simply heart-wrenching.The perfect dose of humor coupled with a great look into natural Florida, away from Disney World and South Beach, I recommend Tourist Season to everyone, anywhere in the US. Definitely a good book to buy and keep forever.

I've been reading Carl Hiassen's work for years, having jumped in around the middle, with "Native Tongue," "Skin Tight" and "Striptease." I've more recently been working my way through the rest of his catalog, including "Stormy Weather" and "Double Whammy," with his two latest books in hardback waiting on my to-be-read shelf.But years after the liner notes for a Jimmy Buffett song ("The Ballad of Skip Wiley and Skeet" off his "Barometer Soup" album) made me go look for this Hiassen's guy's works in a book store, I'm finally getting around to "Tourist Season," the first novel Hiassen wrote, featuring rogue newspaper columnist Skip Wiley.It's said that you spend your entire life writing your first novel, as you inevitably put pretty much all the good stuff in that one. Whatever the state of your craft, it's where your ideas, your good bits, your passion all gets poured into. While I've enjoyed other Hiassen books more (notably "Native Tongue" and "Skin Tight"), this certainly seems to be true for "Tourist Season." While all of his books have an overt current of rage directed at developers, destructive big business and endemic corruption, he always makes sure to leaven that with humor, a little zaniness, and some sweetness. Not here.Sure, there's some amusing bits, a lot of them, really, but Hiassen's subsequent work has never been this dark, his rage never so undiminished. While all of his books barrel towards their climax, this is the first one I've read in which it's hard to see how there could be a happy ending, where the bad guys aren't REALLY bad and where it doesn't all seem like cosmic justice on the last page. I won't spoil the ending, but by midway through the book, it's clear that with the heaping handfuls of moral ambiguity mixed in, it's hard to have anything better than a bittersweet ending.In a nutshell, Miami newspaper columnist Skip Wiley has had enough. Enough of the influx of Yankees to Florida and the concomitant woes of greed, development and reckless destruction of the environment. Especially the latter. When Skip Wiley goes missing, and a new terrorist organization, the Nights of December, starts targeting the tourist industry in South Florida (starting by shoving a rubber alligator down a man's throat and then putting his dead body inside his luggage), Skip's editor calls a former reporter turned private investigator to track him down.Hiassen almost certainly does not advocate terrorism, murder and kidnap, but the cause is clearly near and dear to him, and he argues the Nights' cause eloquently. That makes their extremism tragic, and the possible endings all troubling.A solid novel, and one of Hiassen's best. While all of his novels will make you laugh, and keep you turning the pages, anxious to see what the next twist in the roller-coaster ride will be, "Tourist Season" will make you think, too.Definitely recommended for any of his existent fans, as well as fans of Dave Barry or Elmore Leonard.

This was my first Carl Hiaasen experience. The counter lady at a used book store suggested it (thank you, thank you, thank you) and I've read everyone of Hiaasen's works since then AND I've paid full price so Mr. Hiaasen could be duly compensated for the (unfortunately) short but intense stretches of reading joy he's provided.And as far as the laughing out loud reference in my review title, too many book jackets promise it but this one delivers! If you're new to Hiaasen I suggest you start here and read chronologically. First you'll see the talent grow and you'll get to know the serial characters as they're introduced.If you want a good, fast, quirky, funny, sometimes hilarious read, where the bad guys get what's coming to them---sometimes in the most bizzare ways---then begin at the beginning and carry on through to the most recent Hiaasen offering, Sick Puppy (although you could skip Lucky You and not miss much).Have fun!

The classic Carl Hiassen right here. You might not like the subject matter of this book if you're not a native Floridian, but it's a great work of fiction anyway. If you liked any of his other books, this one is for you!

Although labled a "mystery novel," this book is anything but a "whodunit." Throughout this warped and hilarious novel, the readers know who is doing what to whom--the only mystery is who is going to get to do it first.Brian Keyes, a deft combination of cynicism and innocence, is a journalist-turned-private investigator on the trail of a group of environmental terrorists (who include an inept Cuban bomber, a stoned ex-football player, and a mysterious Native American millionaire). While the antics of the terrorists, the politicos, the media, and the police force will keep you laughing, it is the relationship between Keyes and the charimatic leader of the terrorists (who calls himself El Fuego) that raise this book to another level.And while the reader might wince at the thought of feeding tourists to a hungry crocodile, Hiaasen skillfully manages to pull sympathy towards El Fuego. His methods are sadistic, but Machiavellian--and what he does to these tourists is no less than what we have done to what was once the unspoiled wilderness of the everglades. It is this continuous alternation of allegiances between Keyes and El Fuego that propel this story towards its unusually poignant ending.While "Tourist Season" is a satisfying read on its own, read it back to back with Hiaasen's "Native Tongue," --similar themes, but in "Native Tongue" the environmentalists take the role of protagonists, rather than antagonists.