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Sparky Harper, the president of the Miami Chamber of Commerce is the first victim to surface—he’s found stuffed in a suitcase with his legs cut off, dressed in a gaudy Hawaiian shirt, a rubber alligator lodged in his throat. But he’s not the last. After Sparky, it’s the tourists. A visiting Shriner. A woman from Montreal. A retiree from Brooklyn who’s settled in Florida. One by one, they disappear—all victims of a group of radicals who call themselves Las Noches de Diciembre, the Nights of December. Their mission: to scare off the tourists and the retirees and bring Florida back to what it used to be before the hotels and the high rises—beautiful and natural.
Newspaper reporter turned private detective Brian Keyes finds himself in the middle of the case, trying to hunt down Las Noches and stop the killing…
With each book I read, I’m falling more in love with Carl Hiaasen. Tourist Season, Hiaasen’s solo debut, is another one of those books that was difficult to put down once I picked it up. It’s a hard book to classify, though. It isn’t really a mystery, since you know who’s responsible for the murders almost right away—though you never really know what they’re going to do next. And it’s funny—not in an obviously hilarious way-but in Hiaasen’s subtle, dark way, written with tongue firmly planted in cheek. So let’s call it an action comedy.
Some of the characters alone make this book worth reading—especially Jesús Bernal, the Cuban bomb specialist who just can’t seem to get things right. Or the crazed leader who calls himself El Fuego—who will do anything for a little bit of press coverage.
Tourist Season is a great book to pack for your next vacation—but if you happen to be headed to Florida, you might want to pick something else.
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