Friday, March 16, 2012

Fiction Friday: Florida Roadkill

Florida Roadkill, (HarperCollins, 1999)
As a resident of the Sunshine State, it's always nice to be reading a book and see areas I've actually been, mentioned within.  Tim Dorsey's Florida Roadkill not only offers this opportunity for anyone living in Florida, but is a masterful screwball novel.

Florida Roadkill follows the misadventures of mentally unbalanced criminal, Serge Storms.  When Serge gets off his medication, he rants and raves (usually about Florida) until he passes out and often does not remember these episodes.  A devout student of everything Florida, he often expounds upon the history of the state in every locale to which he travels. And travel, he does.  Serge hits the road with his former prison cell mate and a stripper named Sharon, who's contantly looking to score more cocaine.

But Serge and co. are not the only interesting characters within these pages. Readers will also meet a trio of the worst bikers ever, an enforcer at a condominium community, and a straight edged district attorney.  And then there's the Cuban mafia and the running of the Hemingways in the Keys to add to the wackiness.

Be warned, though.  Though it is a screwball novel with plenty of humor, this is a crime novel at heart.  There's plenty of violence here. And with violence comes death.  Characters will die in this novel, as often happens to those who play fast and loose with the rules of law.

This is the first in a series of novels Dorsey has written featuring Serge Storms.  After reading it, I definitely want to look into the rest of the books.

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