Customer Reviews

Atomic Lobster

5 star:		(29)
4 star:		(15)
3 star:		(10)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

I've got a new hero! And a brand-new series to read! But I don't think most people are going to appreciate him as much as I do, or even be twisted enough to get the gonzo humor involved. Nor will most appreciate that hero's penchant for taking people toilet snorkeling when they disagree with him.

His name is Serge A. Storms, and he's a spree killer. However, before you go thinking too terribly of him, I point out that Serge's victims are only evil people. He only kills the bad guys, and generally then only after being provoked or they don't take his first warning. He's manic depressive but tends to stay on the "up" side of life, which makes him an uncharacteristically happy kind of guy.

Of course, being a spree killer and having a tendency to kill someone with plenty of malice but no real aforethought kind of limits the friends and romances he can have. Serge hangs with the lowlifes, like drug-bingeing Coleman in this novel (who is an absolute riot as well) and Rachel (a down-on-her-luck prostitute with a really serious drug jones). But Serge's heart is always in the right place, always willing to look after society and the environment and his friends.

One of those friends puts in an appearance in this novel. Jim Davenport, the much heckled and timid mouse of a man, has been in previous novels - where he and Serge first struck up their "friendship." In this book, Jim gets menaced by Tex McGraw, a man Jim testified against ten years ago who has now gotten out of prison and plans to enact his revenge. He even has a list. The police know this because Tex said, "I've got a list."

In addition to Serge, Coleman, and Jim, there are four older women who refer to themselves as the G-Unit. They're not big on sobriety or rules, and use their age as a catch-all defense against people who want to hold them accountable for what they've done.

Tim Dorsey has written ten Serge books so far, and ATOMIC LOBSTER is the latest. You don't have to read the earlier books first. Feel free to dive right in with this one. I did. Then I bought earlier books and put them in my TBR pile because I gotta read more.

Before turning to bestselling author, Dorsey was a newspaper writer down in Florida. It seems like a lot of our bestselling authors come from there (Dave Barry, Carl Hiaasen) or move there (Elmore Leonard), and they all end up with twisted senses of humor. I do know that Dorsey carves out a tract of macabre real estate that's completely his own.

I had a bit of a struggle when I first started to read the book because it doesn't start out linearly. Dorsey seems to like to show you some results of actions you haven't read about yet, then double back and let you - in disbelief, I might add - watch how it all happened. And it isn't always what you think it's going to be.

Describing the plot would be a pathetic waste of time. What there is, and it is incredibly thin, is so convoluted that I'd have to give away so much of the fun you have waiting on you that I'm not even going to try. You'll have to read for yourself how Coleman and Lenny (one of Serge's buddies from earlier novels) get together to build the biggest bong, and how they burned a house down doing it. How Serge ends up going frogman gigging in the middle of the night. How Serge exacts vengeance on Tex McGraw for trying to kill Jim.

But most of all, you have to see what happens when Serge gets sent by his psychiatrist to an anger management meeting. Then sent to the NonConfrontationists meeting. How he ends up producing videos of Clowns versus Mimes. I was laughing out loud to the point my wife was asking me what was going on, and when I tried to give her the shorthand version - without her truly getting to appreciate Serge - she was convinced she'd married a madman.

Get a copy of ATOMIC LOBSTER and prepare to get carried away on a wave of incredible zaniness. If you've read Dorsey and Serge before, you know what you're in for. And if you're like me and you haven't, take joy in the fact that you've got nine other books ahead of you!

Serge A. Storms is at it again with his pal Coleman in this new and zany adventure by Tim Dorsey. Rachael is a welcomed additon to the crew this time around. She is frequently at odds with Coleman, coming to blows at times.

The story is not unlike the rest of Dorsey's, but that's the reason you read an author like Dorsey. He is highly consistent, adding layers to the personalities of his perrenial characters like Serge, Coleman, Davenport and of course the G-Unit.

The humor is slapstick and silly but far from juvinile. Anyone who appreciates creative plot development and adult comedy will love this far-out novel.

For Friends of Serge, Atomic Lobster has it all. From the first pages, the book rocks along the tracks threatening to careen out of control, but it never does. With multiple characters and subplots, Dorsey keeps it all together for those of us who may have lost a bit of grey matter along the way. I laughed out loud so much while I was reading this that people began looking a bit warily at me. A great read.

I must say that I have read all of Tim Dersey's books and will continue to do so based solely on the fact that I think Serge is the best literary character I've encountered since the Governor in Carl Haissen's books.

Atomic Lobster is a good read in line with all the rest of the series. There were a couple times I laughed out loud and wondered what was going through the authors head when he was writing this. The development of the storyline is fast paced and I enjoyed the way everyone came together in the end for the big event.

Now for the bad news. It is starting to look as though the series is going into mass production and the script is remaining the same only the names are changing. Hopefully this is not the reality and Serge and Coleman will be around for many fun filled psychotic years.

This adventure (the first I've read of Mr. Dorsey) has Serge A. Storms and Coleman taking on drug dealers, on a cruise ship; with a weird woman named Rachel, and has some funny moments (the bong made out of the aquarium) but overall, it's just ok. It has some crude language (enough to make the saltiest sailor blush) and some funky bits [kinda gross]. I am willing to try another book, unlike a coworker of mine, who found the characters tasteless. If Triggerfish Twist is anything like this one, I probably won't be reading many more, if any more, of his books. It's a matter of taste (or not). If fancies the weird, but with a better class of characters, try Terry Pratchett.

It must be hard to keep doing this, book after book, but it doesn't

show. Serge has no peer. There is no more endearing or enduring

serial killer out there.

Sure it's looney, but it has its own inner logic.

I wish he could meet up with Skink (from Haiasson). That would be

an adventure! Coleman would still have to ride shotgun though.

But if you have a slightly twisted sense of humor and like the bizarre, it's for you. I've not read any of the other books (yet) but this one worked well enough as a stand-alone, though having a bit more background on a few of the characters might have been nice.

The biggest downside of the story was that it was told in a very fragmented style. There were several groups of characters, mostly tangentially related, and the story not only hopped between them, but also moved backwards and forwards in time (there were a few 'four months ago...' sections). It was interesting to see how all of the character's stories intersected, but it could be a little difficult to keep straight (especially listening to it as an audiobook).

The upsides definitely outweighed the downside, though. The book was full of great characters, improbable situations, and dark humor. And when I say dark, I do mean it. Serge spends a good part of the book killing people in delightfully convoluted (think Rube Goldberg) ways, and is completely nonchalant about it. He reminded me a lot of Max from the Sam and Max comic/games ("gratuitous acts of senseless violence are my forte!"). Horrible (and yet, kind of funny) things happen to people left and right. There's rampant drug use and violence, though it certainly doesn't seem out of place with this cast of characters. There were scenes and dialog that actually made me burst out laughing - a great book to listen to if you're blue, since it's both entertaining and heartening that your life isn't as bad as some of these peoples...

And, at the end, it managed to surprise me. I thought, perhaps, I'd guessed the improbable Foxtrot, but I fell for a classic trap and got it all wrong. That little twist was the perfect ending to an extremely entertaining book. I can't wait to read more.

AUDIOBOOK NOTE: The narrator did an extremely good job with the voices and characters in this story (Serge actually sounded a lot like Max). The speed and flow made for easy listening, and there weren't any weird or awkward pauses. Definitely a good one to listen to.

Or maybe it should be Cheech & Chong meet James Bond.

Atomic Lobster is a mystery thriller where the two protagonists are good-natured drugged out losers. Although they kill bad guys, and some who really aren't so bad, it is more humorous than tragic. The originality of how some of the characters are eliminated is amazing.

Nothing is sacred in this novel - old ladies taking consecutive cruises just to take advantage of the free medical on board, a wimp married to an unreasonably demanding wife, a retired football star who spend all his time freebasing, drug smugglers who are unwittingly working for terrorists, terrorists who are disguising their operation as artifact smugglers, and a government secret agent following it all, who is not revealed until the end.

Amazingly enough all this is tied together in a very entertaining book.

Tim Dorsey is something of a guilty pleasure. When he's firing on all cylinders, his novels are outrageously funny, wildly convoluted fun. Inevitably, his novels shift back and forth between high energy fun and jokes or story lines that fall flat. When his novels hit their peaks they feature moments that are laugh-out-loud funny. When they fall flat, they can be tedious. Fortunately Dorsey's rapid fire delivery hits more than it misses.

I wish I could tell you that Dorsey's humour is smart and sophisticated, but as funny as he can be; his humour is a pretty low-brow. In fact, much of it is sexist and juvenile. And yet it works - although admittedly, it's not going to appeal to everyone.

Atomic Lobster is not the best Dorsey novel, but I found it pretty entertaining. While it was entertaining enough, frankly the series is starting to get repetative. There is nothing in this novel that we haven't seen before in the previous nine & not just because the novel feels like a reunion tour. Dorsey brings back almost every character from his previous novels that Serge didn't kill in an earlier adventure, most notably drawing from Triggerfish Twist.

A good part of the fun of this novel is watching Dorsey weave together the storylines of a huge cast characters. There are CIA agents, a terrorist cell, a team of man hungry grannies, a group of men who resemble Wilfred Brimley, a desperate virgin, clowns, mimes, drug smugglers, and a likeable serial killer named Serge. (And that's just scatching the surface of the cast of characters).

If you're a fan of Dorsey: You should enjoy this novel but you won't find much new here. At some point Dorsey is going to have to do something to make the series feel fresh again. If you're new to Dorsey, this isn't necessarily the best place to start. I recommend Triggerfish Twist - my personal favourite or Florida Roadkill the first novel in the series.

With all the other books I've been reading of late, I missed that Tim Dorsey had come out with another Serge Storms novel... Atomic Lobster. So long as you know what you're getting into with a Dorsey novel, this is a lot of fun much as the others were.

It's nearly impossible to write a plot summary of a Dorsey novel. There are a number of things going on that seemingly have nothing to do with anything, only to have them intersect a hundred pages later. The main driving plot in this novel is Serge's "promise" to watch out for Jim Davenport, an extremely non-confrontational guy who doesn't want to do anything to rock the boat. Serge gets involved when he shows up at a support group for people who can't confront others. He hears Davenport's story about being ripped off by some movers, and he takes it upon himself to protect this guy. From there, it all gets crazy. The mover is disposed of in a rather creative fashion. His disappearance triggers some smugglers to go into overdrive to find a statue that he was supposed to deliver. They find Davenport's name and think Davenport has it. The smugglers have to hold off their bosses, so they attempt another job using grandmas on a cruise ship to unknowingly smuggle in ancient artifacts. The grandmas just think it's a piece of junk and dispose of it before they clear customs. A notorious killer is also after Davenport in order to take revenge for his jail time. All these plots (and a few others for fun) converge in a wild party in a house that Serge's supposed to be house-setting. Even then, things aren't done. All of this action takes place at a frenetic pace, with Serge hitting all the "historical" parts of Florida and reliving history long since past.

This really is a wild ride of a novel, in a bizarre way. Serge's means of dishing out justice is gruesome, yet oddly funny in its own way. For a character who is certifiably crazy, Serge has more logic than many other stereotyped Floridians. Fans of Dorsey will understand and enjoy. New readers of Dorsey will probably wonder what they got themselves in for. Just sit back, prepare for lunacy, and go with the flow...