There's something in the waters and winds of Florida that spawns crime writers--bestselling ones at that. From John D. MacDonald, Charles Willeford and Elmore Leonard to Carl Hiaasen, Edna Buchanan and Dave Barry, the wackiest of the group may be Tim Dorsey, the creator of the series (18 novels and counting) featuring self-appointed Florida historian laureate Serge Storms and his toked-up sidekick, Coleman. In Tiger Shrimp Tango, Serge and Coleman traverse Florida's roadside attractions, historical landmarks and Miami Beach swank in their black Firebird Trans Am to investigate the state's world-class scam artists and punish them with ingenious Rube Goldberg-type weapons cobbled out of Home Depot supplies.
The reliable pleasure of Dorsey's novels is neither their plots nor their characters--both of which are pretty much the same in every book. Rather, the great fun is discovering some new exotic fact about the "Sunshine State" and listening to Dorsey's rambunctious language and riffs on historical trivia. Once he gets Serge and Coleman going on a subject, Dorsey clearly has a hard time containing himself.
In a stop at Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings's home on the way to an off-the-grid ostrich farm, for example, Serge explains the history of Rawlings's house, the background of her novel The Yearling and the nuances of her memoir, Cross Creek. With his usual booze and weed clarity, Coleman sums up this literary history succinctly: "Rawlings made Florida her b***h." To which Serge responds: "You've broken new ground in literary criticism." One might just as easily update Coleman: Dorsey has made Florida his b***h. --Bruce Jacobs, founding partner, Watermark Books & Cafe, Wichita, Kan