Tony Hillerman
''Tourist Season'' is a lively story of a conspiracy intended to save Florida for the future by terrorizing tourists and thereby collapsing its superhyped condominium economy. . . . Mr. Hiaasen leaves you grinning a lot. . . Reading Carl Hiaasen is fun. Behind the fun is a sophisticated morality story that leaves you to decide exactly who the bad guy was.
The New York Times
Publishers Weekly - Publisher's Weekly
When the president of the Miami Chamber of Commerce is found dead inside a suitcase with his legs sawn off and a rubber alligator stuffed down his throat, news and police locals prefer to believe it's simply another typical South Florida crime. But when letters from a terrorist group, Las Noches de Diciembre, link the man's death to the disappearances of a visiting Shriner and a Canadian tourist, former newsman (now private eye) Brian Keyes intuits that someone is out to kill Florida's tourist trade. His investigation leads him to an old journalism crony obsessed with fury against the state's irresponsible development policies. Miami Herald columnist Hiaasen writes with a seriousness of intent and knack for characterization which, unfortunately, outstrip his comic talents. This is an auspicious solo debut for the serious Hiaasen (he has written three thrillers with William Montalbano), but a lukewarm one for him as a potential comic-absurdist. (March 24p
From the Publisher
Praise for Tourist Season
"Brash mystery adventure...ferocious fun....There's a fresh breeze, if not a full-scale hurricane, up from Miami. Hiaasen, himself a columnist for the Miami Herald, writes with sardonic wit in a style so breezy that you want to hang on to the mast with both hands.”—Marilyn Stasio, The Columbus Dispatch
"A terrific send-up of Floridiana...zany...satire as withering as a Dade County frost at the peak of citrus harvest...one novelist who never seems to forget for a minute that a chief purpose of any work of fiction is to entertain.”—The Cleveland Plain Dealer
“A remarkable example of what talented writers are doing these days with the mystery novel.”—Tony Hillerman, The New York Times Book Review
“Makes Miami Vice look like Terry and the Pirates....I can't remember another novel that combines violence and comedy as successfully.”—John D. MacDonald, New York Times bestselling author of the Travis McGee series
“Fiendish suspense and wicked black humor...does for Florida what Candy did for sex, and what Semi-Tough did for football. A rollicking, exciting, exceptional book.”—John Katzenbach, New York Times bestselling author of Hart’s War
“Ferocious and ferociously funny. You race through its pages at a gallop.”—John Godey, New York Times bestselling author of The Taking of Pelham One Two Three
“A most engaging novel....Hiaasen has perfectly blended black humor with stark terror.”—Associated Press
“A wonderful achievement, continuously inventive and surprising, very funny but deadly serious beneath the laughs. Hiassen's voice is his own...a hell of a job.”—Pete Hamill, New York Times bestselling author of Forever
“Wondrously told! Tourist Season is what we read novels for—high entertainment and high excitement.”—Richard Condon, author of Prizzi’s Honor