Carl Hiaasen’s Tourist Season is a flat-out hoot of a novel that delivers all you’d expect from one of America’s wittiest novelists. The story involves a zany but engaging plot, a crew of outrageous characters, biting satire, hilarious dialogue and a sprinkling of social commentary. Published in 1986, in the pre-internet, pre-smartphone era, Tourist Season begins with several bizarre and seemingly unrelated deaths in Miami, Florida. A former reporter turned private eye, Brian Keyes, suspects that these deaths are more than random. His investigation leads him to the Miami Sun, and eventually to a group of reactionaries hell bent on fomenting enough fear and panic to drive tourists (and future economic development) out of the Sunshine State. This ragtag group is led by a popular (and deranged) Sun columnist and includes a former pro football player, an ex-Cuban militant and an indigenous entrepreneur with a score to settle. From the opening scene when a visiting Shriner goes missing to the final pages where a coral isle is about to be blown to smithereens, Tourist Season is a fun, lively romp that will keep readers entertained and laughing all the way.
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