Tourist Season was the first novel from best-selling author Carl Hiaasen. It was written and set in the 80's in Miami, Florida. I thought the story was entertaining, but it's not the author's best work. The cover of the book makes promises of giant crocodiles in south Florida, but that was hardly the case.

This story is really about eco-terrorists who murder a few people in order to scare the tourists and other transplants out of south Florida. They murder a Shriner and a local businessman, then they feed an old lady to a salt water crocodile. They also plant a few bombs and generally raise hell in Dade County. The villains were such bumbling idiots that they were meant to be funny, but in this day and age it is kind of hard to sell terrorism as comedy.

What I didn't like about this story was that the ‘hero' knew what the villain was doing from the very beginning. He even witnessed the guy feed the old lady to the croc, but this ‘hero' constantly withheld information from the authorities. The main villain was a crazed environmentalist who wanted to give all of south Florida back to the wildlife and see it all become swamps again, and he was willing to kill to make that happen. He enlists a drugged-out former football player, a psychopathic Cuban, and an angry Seminole Indian descendant to help him.

The author of this book, Carl Hiaasen, is a very well-known environmentalist who tends to put environmental themes in all his books. I couldn't help but feel like he was very sympathetic to the cause of his own terrorist villains because he wrote so much material backing up their motivations and it seemed rather preachy at times. Even with the way it all played out, I felt like the author was trying to justify their behavior, or at least their higher purpose.

What I did like about this book was the author's personal writing style that he injects in all of his books. He's great at creating colorful characters with many quirks that make them stand out like supporting characters in a Coen brothers movie. I would love to see Joel and Ethan Coen take on one of Hiaasen's novels because the style is similar. Even though I wasn't too much into the situation presented in the story, I found most of the characters interesting enough to keep me reading.

This book was written in the early 80's, and as such it is fairly dated. If only the characters had access to Google or cell phones, the whole thing would have fallen apart. Other than a few technical issues and some decades-old pop culture references, the story still applies pretty well today. It could easily be adapted into a movie set in present day.

If you like mysteries, you'll probably find something to enjoy about this one. It has a few surprises and does present an interesting situation. It takes a little long to get to the conclusion because of all the misdirection, but it is still a pretty fun read. The problem is that you know who all the villains are in the very beginning, so there isn't anything for the reader to figure out. Instead of a ‘who done it', this is a ‘who will stop them before they do it'.

In the end, I liked reading it but wasn't all that impressed with Tourist Season. I think the book cover promised something other than what was actually delivered, and I felt like the author sympathized way too much with his villains. To date, I think Hiaasen's best novel is Skinny Dip.

Recommended: No