Carl Hiaasen's comic satiric novels center around some atrocity humans are inflicting on the state of Florida. In Hiaasen's first novel, 'Tourist Season' (1986), a fed-up journalist decides to drive tourists and snowbirds out of Florida, so developers will stop building the condos and hotels that destroy the state's beauty and ecology.
The premise of 'Tourist Season' is that Skip Wiley, the most popular columnist at the Miami Sun newspaper, fashions himself into El Fuego, Comandante of a terrorist group called Las Noches de Diciembre (The Nights of December).
Wiley remains incognito while the other members of Las Noches de Diciembre who have their own motives for fomenting chaos, are the 'front men' for the terrorist group. These zealots are:
◈ Viceroy Wilson - An African-American former football player for the Miami Dolphins. Viceroy is seeking redress for the exploitation/mistreatment of Black people in America.
◈ Jesús Bernal - an American-born Dartmouth graduate of Cuban ancestry. Jesús pretends he's an immigrant from Cuba and speaks like Desi Arnaz. Bernal is an inept bombmaker who seeks to foment a revolt against Fidel Castro.
◈ Tommy Tigertail - a Seminole Indian who's made millions from bingo on the reservation. Tommy wants revenge for the historic mistreatment of Indians by White people.
Las Noches de Diciembre, which a newspaper typo changes to the laughable Las Nachos de Diciembre (The Nachos of December) further their terrorist campaign by murdering tourists, like Shriner Theodore Bellamy and Canadian visitor Renee LeVoux; bombing golf courses and newspaper officers; using a helicopter to drop hundreds of rattlesnakes on a cruise ship; threatening Miami's Rose Bowl parade; and more.
Skip Wiley's friend and former colleague Brian Keyes, who's now a private investigator, is hired by the Shriner's wife to track down her husband's killer. This puts Brian on the horns of a dilemma because he doesn't want to point the finger at his chum.
The Miami police are after Las Noches as well, but the authorities play down the havoc created by the insurrectionists, to keep the tourist trade and influx of retirees going strong.
Additional characters that add interest to the story include:
◈ Jenna - Skip Wiley's girlfriend, a wily sex-goddess who loves to cook and bake.
◈ Pavlov - a tourist-eating crocodile.
◈ Dr. Remond Courtney - a shill psychiatrist who'll testify to anything for money.
◈ Cab Mulcahy - the worried managing editor of the Miami Sun, who suspects Skip Wiley is El Fuego.
◈ Ricky Bloodworth - a deluded Miami Sun columnist, who's ambitious but untalented.
◈ Police Sergeant Al García - the Cuban-American detective tasked with stopping Las Noches.
◈ Kara Lynn Shivers - a nineteen-year-old beauty queen threatened by the terrorists.
All this makes up a story that's simultaneously hilarious and heart-wrenching. Thus the reader laughs while being horrified by the death and destruction.
Hiaasen's subsequent books, which are even funnier than Tourist Season, also rail against the devastation in Florida...to little avail (sadly).
In any case, if you need a laugh, Hiaasen's books will fill the bill.
I listened to the audiobook, narrated by George Wilson, who does a great job with the plethora of voices.
Rating: 3.5 stars
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