Tourist Season by Carl Hiaasen
Relentlessly violent screwball book. Published in 1986. This is my first Carl Hiaasen book. It is also Hiaasen's first book as a solo author. Hiaasen goes for over-the-top funny, much like Elmore Leonard and Dave Barry. but, in the end it wore me down rather than keeping me intrigued. The premise of Tourist Season is that a Miami-based newspaper columnist is sick of all of the development in and around Miami and the Everglades so he decides to start a campaign of terrorism to scare away the tourists and to discourage more development. The columnist (whose anti-development commentary rarely deviates from Hiaasen's as the narrator) is joined by an anti-Castro bumbling bomb specialist, an African American that is a former star member of the Miami Dolphins who hates almost all white people and a native Indian from the area who is flush with bingo and gambling money. Throw in a newbie Private Detective and an Orange Bowl Queen that is sick of the pageant scene and you have a p...