"They call it 'Paradise, the place to be' ...Call some place 'Paradise'; Kiss it goodbye." (Don Henley)

Our US population is undeniably mobile: the most recent statistic I read claimed that the average American moves once every five years. That means packing up the household goods, the kids, the dog, shoving everything into a rented U-Haul, and setting out for a new home. Sometimes we move across town; sometimes we move across the country. The important thing, though, is that we move, and we move often. Take me, for instance: in the past thirty years, I've lived in twenty-one different homes, twelve different cities, and seven different states; with stays ranging from two months to seven years. The shortest move was across the hall in the same apartment building; the longest about 1500 miles. So now you know who keeps that average down.

There have always been "hot" destinations for all these mobile people; in years past, footloose youth flocked to those hot destinations: LA, San Francisco, Seattle, Denver, Austin. Their grandparents, sick of cold winters, migrated south like geese to resettle in Arizona, Florida, Texas. All of them looking for "Paradise, the place to be."


But what about the people who already live in Paradise?

The natives are often restless, sometimes belligerent. I remember seeing bumper stickers in Denver when I first moved there (from Wyoming, mind you): Welcome to Colorado. Now go home. Letters to the editor in Austin-area newspapers commonly bemoan the loss of "small town life" and suggest that the newcomers should "go back to New Jersey." Native Angelenos rue the day an orange grove was bulldozed flat to build the first tract houses on their quarter-acre lots.

"Native" bumper stickers have proliferated over the years: California, Wyoming, New Mexico, Colorado, Texas, Tunisia (Tunisia?). It's a kind of us against them mentality; the long-timers vs. the interlopers. Can you blame them? All those new houses were built on top of their old playgrounds; new shopping malls were built on their favorite fishin' holes; their teenage lover's lanes disappeared under the concrete of the latest industrial park. I know I feel pangs of loss when I visit the old homestead, and northern Indiana has never been the latest "place to be."

What would happen if the natives revolted? Carl Hiaasen thinks he knows; let's hope he's wrong.


Welcome to the Revolution! (brought to you by Las Noches de Diciembre)

The revolution begins with the disappearance of a Shriner visiting Miami Beach from Minnesota, leaving behind only his waterlogged fez. Then the legless corpse of the president of the Miami Chamber of Commerce turns up packed into a red Samsonite suitcase floating in the bay. Then things get weird: Badly constructed bombs are removing appendages from cops and reporters... a seventeen-foot crocodile is snacking on blue-haired condo-queen retirees and drunken fraternity pledges... all of a sudden, the Orange Bowl Parade queen needs a bodyguard...

The movement that styles itself Las Noches de Diciembre* has a mission: a mission to rid south Florida of all the retirees with their golf carts and shuffleboard courts, and all the sunburned tourists with their bermuda shorts and Gucci knockoffs. The movement that styles itself Las Noches de Diciembre is probably overmanned, for the movement comprises only four members: a disaffected Cuban-American anarchist, a disgruntled African-American ex-football player, a disinterested Seminole millionaire, and El Fuego. In real life, El Fuego is a disingenuous newspaper columnist for the Miami Sun, Skip Wiley.

Hot on the trail of Las Noches we find Skip's former co-worker Brian Keyes, who has reincarnated himself as a soft-hearted private eye; wily Cuban police sergeant Al Garcia; and Skip's world-weary editor, Cab Mulcahey. Darting in and out of the picture are a plethora of incompetent cops, myriad incompetent reporters, and a firmament of avaricious Chamber of Commerce types. Brian also becomes entangled with Skip's live-in lover (and Brian's ex-girlfriend), Jenna; and the Orange Bowl Parade queen herself, Kara Lynn Shivers.

As la ultima noche de Diciembre -- and the Bowl Parade itself -- approaches, Skip and his motley crew put in motion their final, most manic plans to rid Skip's beloved South Florida of all the interlopers. Their fervent hope is to make everything from the beaches to the Everglades so inhospitable that even the hardiest snowbird will decamp for quieter climes.


A Columnist's Coup

His 1986 novel is the maiden effort from Carl Hiaasen (himself a columnist for the Miami Herald). With his sardonic, pull-no-punches tale, Hiaasen quickly established himself as a voice of Native Florida. A series of similarly blackly humourous books followed at irregular intervals, including such titles as Native Tongue, Lucky You, and Sick Puppy. Recent books feature visits from a recurring character named "The Skink," a former governor turned hermit eco-raider. No tourist icon, no retirement community, no money-grubbing development scheme is safe from Hiaasen's acid wit.

The readers of most newspapers will recognize the manic voice of Skip Wiley, through which Hiaasen speaks. It's the voice of that three-times-a-week columnist on your own local paper: the columnist who, when s/he can't think of anything else to write, dashes off a put-down column. Read the Denver Pest? is Woody Paige still writing a column about how horrible it must be to live in {insert name of city here} every couple of days? Does he still use only five or six words per paragraph? Or how about my local newspaper, the Austin American-Misstatesman and their columnist John Kelso, so many of whose columns discuss barbecue joints that you think he's a restaurant reviewer?

That's the voice of Skip Wiley, and thus the voice of Carl Hiaasen. Short, punchy prose in a near-telegraphic style lays out the skeleton of Hiaasen's black humor. It's not a mystery novel -- we know whodunnit, we just don't know when he'll get caught. It's not a thriller -- there's not a spy in sight, and just about everybody who dies is essentially blameless. It's not suspense -- the fate of Wiley's little band of guerillas is obviously sealed from the get-go. So why read it?


Why Read It, Indeed?

Like many first novels, Tourist Season probably made more of a splash than it merited. The plot is often inane, and the book is peopled by characters shallow as the water off the Florida Keys. All but a handful of the inhabitants of Miami are portrayed as half-wits, each more incompetent than the last: political-animal cops, barely-literate reporters, greedy developers, lecherous beauty contest judges... In this sea of mundanity and banality, Brian, Skip and Kara Lynn quickly rise to the surface.

Hiaasen's vision for the liberation of South Florida is also wildly, gratuitously violent. In short, it's not a particularly good novel, but it's an important novel for the genre; important for two reasons:

* Hiaasen didn't hit his stride until later, honing his considerable skills in subsequent novels. Tourist Season merely marks his somewhat halting first steps. Besides, later books are funnier and not as violent.
* Hiaasen speaks for those folks who already live in the latest version of "Paradise"; those who can remember a simpler time, when beauty and peace had not been carved into greenbelts threaded through condominium complexes. I guess it's about time somebody spoke for the natives.


Afterword

Not familiar with Carl Hiaasen and his warped sense of humor? I don't rightly know that this is the place to start. If you are familiar with Hiaasen, and you're tired of waiting out the longish intervals between his books, I have a suggestion: James W. Hall. Try him, I think you'll like him.



* "The Nights of December"


Recommended: Yes