BOOKS: Florida Roadkill

Well, I finished Tim Dorsey's Florida Roadkill, fulfilling my prediction as to which of the many books I was reading I would finish first.

It's an excellent beach/airplane-type read. Lots of fun, wacky, and often violent stuff happening up and down Florida, involving drug-running, the insurance industry, fishing, the world's most incompetent motorcycle gang, the 1997 World Series (won by the Florida Marlins), and five million dollars. If you've read Carl Hiaasen, Elmore Leonard, or even Dave Barry's novels, you pretty much know what to expect, and whether or not you're going to like it. I liked it a lot.

This is Dorsey's first novel, in which he introduces us to recurring character Serge A. Storms, Florida history buff and insane criminal. The strange thing is, in this novel Serge meets traveling companions Coleman and Sharon, both of whom die before the end. Yet both of them also appear in Dorsey's fourth novel, Triggerfish Twist, which I read a year or two ago. It doesn't seem like the timeline would allow for the events of the fourth book to happen while Serge, Coleman, and Sharon are offstage in the first book, but perhaps that is better left for Dorsey scholars to calculate.

Funny thing about this book: it ends on a cliffhanger. This is Dorsey's first book. And he's ending it with a "To Be Continued." That takes some balls. Outside of the fantasy/sci-fi world, in which every first book is the first of a series, I can't think of many authors who have pulled this kind of crap. Whatever -- it worked, I'm hooked. I'm now reading the continuation, Hammerhead Ranch Motel, and loving it, too.