My book club picked this book and assured us that even though it was number 9 in a series, you didn't have to read the other 8 to get it. Tim Dorsey is always worth reading, but I’m hoping his next book will give me a little more something to relish. Road trips in stolen cars are what Serge and Coleman do, but it’s more fun to accompany them if there’s a reason why they’re out there. A successful series needs not only good recurring characters, but a good story to follow every time out. That may be how Coleman does things, but Serge has always had some kind of a plan until recently.Īnyone reading these books loves Serge and finds humor in Coleman’s creative substance abuse, but there really has to be more going on than that. This time their aimless wandering was the result of following hurricanes, but it still lacked any kind of reasoning, other than experiencing the rush. Whereas Dorsey’s books used to seem like a series of bizarre, seemingly unrelated events that all worked toward a central theme, the last couple have been a lot of Serge and Coleman wandering around with little purpose. This book doesn’t lack a cohesive theme so much as the theme is basically irrelevant. There were several times this book made me laugh out loud, but I have to wonder if Dorsey isn’t losing his touch in much the same way Mahoney believed Serge was unraveling. Or are there two killers now? The usual hijinks and mishaps ensue as Serge visits his therapist in between driving a stolen Hummer through the number of hurricanes that hit the Florida coast and offing a few deserving bozos along the way. McSwirley’s bosses want the ratings an exclusive with Serge will bring, and Mahoney just wants Serge, especially since he thinks Serge’s personality is beginning to split. Mahoney is hot on Serge’s trail again, this time enlisting the help of empathetic reporter, Jeff McSwirley. Not sure who to recommend it to, though.Ĭoleman and Serge are back in Miami, and so is Mahoney, the cop who’s been trying to put Serge away with such little success he himself was just released from the loony bin. I really enjoyed it read straight through in maybe 3 days. It's his most well-crafted to date, I think, and he's backed off of gruesome description somewhat. Anyway, this one, Hurricane Punch, revolves around a copycat seriel killer and the crazy Florida news media. I know, sounds debauched, but it comes across really funny. The main schtick (and what makes him a sympathetic character) is that he only kills people who deserve it, and only in really interesting ways that fit their transgressions. His main recurring character, Serge Storms is a Florida history nut/serial killer with heart of gold. Also, he's kind of sick and twisted - he writes Florida crime fiction - think Carl Hiassen or Elmore Leonard, but a bit more humor (like Dave Barry) and more twisted. He's kind of a guilty pleasure of mine - one on the few authors that we shelve in Mystery who I read consistently. Had to drop everything I was reading a few days ago when I realized that Tim Dorsey had a new book out. All of which ultimately leads to the most pressing question on everyone's new-millennium What would Serge do? Winds howl, TV reporters fly around the beach, the Party Parrot parties on, and questions Who's stalking Tampa Bay's most sensitive journalist? Did Tom Cruise go too easy on Matt Lauer? Do multiple orgasms improve storm tracking? Why is the feeding-tube guy so quiet? Will Molly ruin our antihero's dreams of playing the electric guitar better than Clapton?. Then there's Coleman, whose triathlete approach to the sport of polyabuse binging just might derail the mission more than the entire police community put together. Serge's personality is simply splitting from decades of burning with incandescent zest for everything under the sun. The obsessive criminal profiler-just released from a mental hospital where he'd been sent for getting too deep inside Serge's head-is convinced there is no second killer. except if he gets bored or distracted by a cool souvenir or. Bodies have begun turning up at a disturbing rate, even for Florida, and it looks like a brutal serial killer is on the loose, which highly offends Serge's moral sensibilities and he vows to stop at nothing in his juggernaut to make All Things Right. His cherished home state is about to take a beating, and from far more than the way-too-routine conga line of hurricanes bearing down on the peninsula. And not a weirdness-laced moment too soon. That lovable, under -undermedicated dispenser of truth, justice, and trivia is back with a vengeance. Welcome to another typical summer in Florida, the season of the storms.
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