I always am a little disconcerted by Carl Hiaasen books because he confounds me. I never know where he is going with his story. The tone of his books in particular leave me wondering for the first 50 or so pages: is this supposed to be funny? A satire? A detective genre? Serious and sad? A thriller? A quick beach read? Tourist Season struck me the same as other books by CH. Bad things happen to innocent people as well as to characters who are obviously to be booed whenever they appear. Since most of the folks who appear in the author's novels are true-to-life oddballs and genuine psychopathic monsters I actually feel the books have some basis in reality. So many street people and criminals are REALLY as bizarre as the characters shown in this book and in most of the other books this author has written. Truly. Although so many idiosyncratic people in one story is unusual accept for satires and comedies. But the events, in this case caused by a group of "terrorists" who for a variety of reasons-repulsed by environment degradation, wanting to free Cuba, hating white people-team up to murder tourists and create fear so Florida can be restored to a natural, barely inhabited state when everyone moves away because of the murders, are so horrifically described that I can't feel the funny or satire. It includes the usual boilerplate motives behind typical business promotions and community holiday events, as in a beach read. People, good and bad, are fleshed out pretty much realistically, if exaggerated, mostly for comic effects and quick boilerplate identifications, but yet some of them are truly literary novel tragic. My problem is, as is the same as some of the other CH novels I've read, with the tone. It's satiric, then it's a fun, then it's plain horrific and sad, then it's a character study. Sometimes it's a serious book for awhile. It's definitely entertaining for the most part. But I can't tell if it's all for fun, or if the author actually cares about something. There is a lack of focus sometimes to the plot, unusual for a genre or a beach read, and so many of the characters also appear to lack intellectual and emotional focus, which is on purpose, I think, because that's how people are in real life. At the same time the action is revealing character moral attitudes more like a literary novel. There is no question CH finds even the bad guys reasonable in their obscene activities or madness on some level, even while showing they are obviously crazy or damaging. By the end, things conclude, but not with a point or a meaningful ending implicitly or explicitly spelled out. Things happen, helter skelter, and then it's the last page, more like a True Crime non-fiction. Watching the fictional oddballs behave so weird in the book ( yet at the same time I know recognizable real counterparts can be found in the news on CNN) seems to be the point. If Anne Rule was mashed up with Southern Gothic mixed with Tosh.O you get a CH novel. Is it good? I THINK so. I always feel like this when I finish a Carl Hiaasen book.
Three and a half stars.Just like Donovan used to sit at the feet of Bob Dylan, Carl Hiaasen will forever be an Elmore Leonard wannabe. Now, this isn’t a bad thing. If your child wants to grow up to be president, you’d want them to model themselves after Abe Lincoln and not Warren Harding or Franklin Pierce.The novel, Hiaasen’s first, is pretty good, but you can see Hiaasen measuring himself up against the master. Fortunately, here he sticks with what he knows best: the newspaper business, civilization encroaching upon the everglades and Southern Florida. He keeps it relatively simple: decently drawn characters, fairly riveting plot, and generous dollops of humor. It wasn’t until later novels that Hiaasen heavily embraced (for good or ill) his quirky nature. Also: his future attempts at female leads in the other books I’ve read reveal a writer uncomfortable with or unable to write from the opposite gender’s point-of-view. In this one, he plays it safe; he doesn’t try to write from a woman’s perspective - it's a testosterone fest.Are Floridians this loopy? Is it the inhalation of swamp gas drifting from the everglades? Is there something in the Gulf water? Is it some sort of Seminole curse? I have a few in-laws who live there and my wife has friends who are long-time Flordia residents, so there is some empirical and personal evidence to support this whole idiosyncratic query. * Plus, this is a state that reveres Jimmy Buffett and when he dies, Florida will probably have him stuffed and put on display. ** Eccentric Florida literature has become a mini-genre unto itself, Goodreads recommended scores of books of this type. Why Florida? Why not Delaware, South Dakota or Wyoming? *My Goodreads friends from Florida, of course, are the exceptions.** I say, why wait, do it now.
What do You think about Tourist Season (2005)?
Carl Hiaasen's works are usually very funny, intelligent, witty, creative, with a happy ending. What could you want more from an entertaining lite read? The imaginative characters, the adventure, the great use of irony and sarcasm, he keeps you guessing how things could possibly all work out for the best, and they do in his books which I like. I always find good qualities to admire in his heros, and can easily despise the villians, cheering when they meet their demise...in whatever creative fashion that might come. I also like the positive ecological theme that runs throughout many of his books. Hiaasen's works are great diversions in life, and if you look at them the right way you might even find a surprising improved perspective, but perhaps that's simply from the number of laugh out loud moments.
—Janelle
I love Carl Hiaasen. Nobody turns a phrase quite like him, and nobody comes up with as wonderfully cracked villians (and heroes) quite like him (altho lord knows a lot of authors try and some of em even come nice and close) This being his very first novel has a very nifty idea at its heart--one almost too good to spoil in a synopsis but the title kinda gives it away (Tourist Season--think about it) However as clever as the idea is, and as warped as the villian in this novel is---i kinda thought the whole thing gets away from Hiaasen in a way that the other books i've read by him over the years never do. Don't get me wrong i enjoyed it--the sarcasm and the anger that i love in his work is there in force--and the nice turns of phrase are also there---but again there's just something here that didn't quite click for me on the whole. Maybe it was the cracked columnist's motivation, maybe it was his one dimensionality, but i never really warmed up to his righteous anger and indignation the way i generally do at "the bad guys" in Hiaasen's other work. Also the hero of the book is kind of a general character as well now that i think about it.That said---it is worth a look, i actually think this would be a perfect starting place for people who've never read his work before to start on if only because as a starter book you get a good feel for his point of view, his nice sense of anything goes wackiness, and his usual use of extreme environment protection as a plot device as well--however all of these things have been put to much better use in later book so maybe it wouldn't be such a good starter book after all??? Whatever--He's still my single favorite contemporary writer out there and as such i'll say that anything he puts his name to is worth reading but maybe try to understand that this was his first book.
—Matthew Stechel
A team of unlikely misfits make for some serious humor in what many Florida natives probably secretly dream about, doing away with the tourists. I found myself actually laughing out loud with Hiaasen's sharp and witty humor. The schemes of the antagonists to poetically do-in the tourist market for Southern Florida were quite inventive. Let me just say, part of me was rooting for the alligator. Tourist Season being the first Hiaasen I read I was not at all disappointed. In fact it was quite the opposite; it was the beginning of an addiction.
—James
