Customer Reviews

Florida Road Kill: A Novel

5 star:		(49)
4 star:		(25)
3 star:		(13)
2 star:		(12)
1 star:		(11)

 

 

Tim Dorsey's "Florida Roadkill" is hands down, without a doubt, one of the funniest novels I've read in years! I was laughing by page two!

The narrative is fast-paced and top notch. The plot is devilishly multi-layered and engaging. Mr. Dorsey populates his delightfully demented Floridian world with the most whacked out collection of loonies ever assembled.

Serge A. Storms is a character that readers will remember for some time. Mentally unbalanced and a font of trivial pursuit-esque knowledge.

Coleman, Serge's sidekick, is a whack-a-loon of the highest caliber. There's a seen involving Coleman, an almost successful bank robbery and a poorly hidden dye-pack that had me laughing till my sides hurt. Clearly a scene that could easily be adapted for the big screen by the Farrelly brothers!

The supporting cast of nut-jobs really flesh this novel out! To name but only a few....Sharon Rhodes. Johnny Vegas. The Riders of Eternal Doom, Sunshine Chapter. Fred McJagger and his beleaguered residents of Vista Isles. Mo Grenadine. And let's not forget the world's worst drug cartel!

Throw into this mix a suitcase with $5 million in cash and you get a novel that's some bizarre emulsion of a Monty Python sketch, Clerks, Pulp Fiction and "It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World"!

The inference that this novel is remiscent of Hiaasen is a very nice sentiment and well deserved. However, Tim Dorsey is a writer of his own unqiue style of prose and humor. I EAGERLY await "Hammerhead Ranch Motel"!

To those who think Tim Dorsey isn't in the same league as Hiaasen, Shames or Leonard and the rest of the ilk....I think you need to seriously develop some taste. You want to talk about "borrowing" from Hiaasen? Then read "Big Trouble" by Dave Barry. As much as I love Hiaasen, and have read almost every one of his books, his approach thesedays is so extremely color-by-the-numbers, that you can see what's coming from about 20 miles away.

Dorsey stands on his own and he does it incredibly well. With nods of the head to Hiaasen and even Barry (they do a "cameo" in this book), this book is its own creation. It owes very little to the other authors. This book has many twists and turns, and it's fantastic to see how these characters get what's coming to them. There are many times that what is going on in the story is just laugh-out-loud funny. Contrary to some of the short-attention-span readers below, you DO care what happens to these characters. They DO come to life and make you feel as if you almost know them. Having lived in Tampa, as well as South Florida before, maybe this is a humor that is best appreciated by Florida folks. Maybe there's something that's lost in the translation on its way to other states (Virginia and Oregon, I'm looking in your direction.)

A word of "caution" I suppose is in order. Not to give away the ending of this book, but, it just ends. It ends with an old-fashioned radio program ending such as: "Will our hero escape the death trap?" or "What will become of?" Yes, no perfect-wrap-it-up-in-a-pretty-bow style "EPILOGUE" endings so famous with Hiaasen and ripped off by Barry and Shames. Perhaps some kudos are in order for creative marketing skills, I don't really know.

Having said that about the ending, the story continues and is picked back up in "Hammerhead Ranch Motel." So, my advice, buy both of these books to get the complete tale, or you will be just left wondering.

You want some Florida authors that make Hiaasen (again, even as much as I love him), Shames, Barry, and Dorsey, seem like school children? Look into James W. Hall and Randy Wayne White. They are truly gifted and epitomize literary skill. If overall wackiness is your genre, look further into anything by Christopher Moore.

Enjoy it for good writing, great humor, and a entertaining story. If you're constantly reading line by line, looking for things similar to other authors, get a life. You have far too much time on your hands if that's the case. If it is the case, think about this, someone (and I won't name names) said that all fiction is styled directly from "Tom Sawyer" and "Huckleberry Finn." Put that in your pseudo-intellectual pipe and smoke it.

...for me to finally get into this story. Having read only one Hiaasen book which was too miserable to remember I had sworn off the Florida Fiction genre forever. Then I discovered Laurence Shames. His tales, while somewhat over the top at least provided a cast of characters that one could relate to. When I came across Dorsey after completing the Shames catalog, I figured why not? The prologue; a number of disjointed scenes without explanation was a great way to lure the reader in, fast paced, all action. Why were these characters thrown into such outlandish situations? What was the common thread that joined them together? Obviously the answers would come in the chapters ahead. The unfortunate part for me was that most of these characters were more like caricatures. Everything about them was so bizzarely ridiculous, yet shortly after the halfway point everything suddenly fell into place, starting with four latin thugs holding a corporate office hostage in search of the CEO who has indirectly absconded with a hefty sum of their money. Rather than quaking in fear, the hostages assault them with questions.

>> One of the employees raised his hand.
"This isn't school! We don't take questions."
"How do you smuggle cocaine?"
"I saw it in the papers that they call you the Keystone Cartel"
"Do you Hide it in your underwear?"
"Do you swallow balloons with tiny strings that come up your throat and are tied to your back teeth?"
"You should get a running start and run right up to the border and throw it really hard."
The leader raised his arms to get the room's attention.
"OK we gotta leave now. Nobody move...and count to ten thousand. What's that state you say to count slow?"
"Mississippi," One of them answered.
"Mississippi, that's it. Let me hear all of you."
The staff: "One Mississippi, two Mississippi, three Mississippi"
The Mierda cartel sprinted for the elevators.

It was here when I realized this story echoed one of my favorite movies of all time; "It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World," the tale of a bunch of unlikely characters all in search of a fortune that doesn't belong to them. Florida Roadkill primarily revovlves around Serge A. Storms; a psychopathic killer who has stopped his medication. His obsession with Florida history is both heartwarming and captivating. Dorsey has a way of intertwining what I assume are real historical facts that are fascinating while letting this yarn spin completely out of control. By the end of the book, you're out of breath both from the chase and laughing so hard, you can't wait to get to the next installment. Stick with it. The payoff(?) is well worth it.

Picture this scene: I'm riding in a Greyhound bus filled with various low-lifes (including myself) from Gainesville to Ft. Myers (both in Florida) with this book in hand, laughing out loud every 5 minutes or so. Ordinarily, this is not proper behavior on such a trip, where you should keep your mouth shut and your valuables firmly in grasp. Kudos to you, Mr. Dorsey, for your ability to express the insanity of Florida crime with such wit and candor. You are truly in league with Hiaasen and Leonard for great Florida crime fiction. I can't wait until the next book for the exploits of Serge, who is certainly in line for admission into the Crime Character Hall of Fame (next to Hiaasen's Skink).

I LOVE Carl Hiaasen's work so, when Tim Dorsey was recommended to me as a Hiaasen-clone and I had already finished reading everything Hiaasen had ever written, I literally dropped everything I was doing and rushed to my local bookstore. There were about 6 or 7 Dorsey choices, I ended up with Florida RoadKill.

Admittedly, Dorsey is trying to channel Hiaasen. He even mentions him outright, along with others (James Hall, et al) in Road Kill ... as either homage or possibly even a bibliographical footnote.

The problem I have is, while Hiaasen's villain's bizarre deaths seem truly justified throughout his novels, Dorsey's murders/deaths to villains and numerous bystanders, would be defined as absolutely, violently gratuitous. I am by no means a prude, but even I blanched at the shotgun blasts to the neck, the Barbie doll down the throat, the lethal alcohol suppository, or the "Fix-a-Flat" murder, etc. It gets old --- reeeaaaallly fast.

Also, even with Hiaasen's over the top satire, he always stays within the realm of reality. Even if just barely. Dorsey instead will often boil over into outright silliness. Like when he's describing the drug cartel's last place in the drug cartel world. This particular drug cartel was voted: Most likely to be extradited. Now I'm not saying this type of writing isn't humorous, it's often downright funny. The problem is, with this type of blatant wink-wink to the reader, it completely shatters any sense of verisimilitude and belongs in a satirical newspaper article, not a novel.

Dorsey's attempt to paint a broad sense of Florida also gets rather tiring. In order to accomplish his descriptions, rather than weaving them seamlessly throughout his story, he portrays one of his "heroes?" as a Florida history buff and another pair of his characters as a driver/navigator team, reading a book on Florida as they travel. This enables Dorsey to painfully describe Florida landmarks right out of the pages of a travel book, along with build dates and historical characters and events. After a while, it feels more like you're being manipulated rather than told a story.

As other reviewers have commented, there are a ridiculous number of characters, and Dorsey expects the reader to remember a minor player that he mentioned in chapter 3, when he meets his demise in chapter 25. I often found myself flipping back 200 pages just to re-read who did what or what had happened.

Finally, and this is the main problem I have with the book, is lack of empathy. Any good novelist will create a lead character that his reader's will empathize with, and care about what happens to. I appreciate the use of an anti-hero, meaning a protagonist who we all love, but has major character flaws. Perfect examples of good anti-heroes are the two in Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid. After all, they're both criminals, felons even, but we loved them, because they were just two likeable characters that had obviously chosen the wrong career path in life.

But Dorsey, for some bizarre reason, doesn't really settle on a lead character for quite some time. Without trying to bore you, there's Dave and Sean and Veale and Serge and Coleman and Saffron and Sharon and Susan and Dar-Dar and, literally another thirty or forty characters. I kept reading, playing along, waiting for Dorsey to show me which one I needed to empathize with.

When I finally got to the end of the book, and realized that (and I'm still not sure about this) SERGE was the main character ... I almost became physically ill. While, Dorsey may have envisioned Serge as his lovable, oft-misunderstood anti-hero, there could be nothing farther from the truth. Serge is actually a sadistic, narcissistic yet self-loathing, HIV-infected, hateful, despicable, mass-murderer. NOTE TO DORSEY - An anti-hero is allowed to have major character FLAWS but that is not the same as being a MASS MURDERER!

I realize that not every book should have a happy "Hollywood" ending, but this piece of scum gets to murder whomever and whenever he wants, and yet not have to face justice in the end. Dorsey theoretically might argue that he's keeping Serge alive so that he could serve as the bad guy in his next book, a la Hannibal Lector, but remember, Hannibal was always seen as the arch-villain in Thomas Harris' books, never as an anti-hero.

Because of the aforementioned problems, reading Florida RoadKill might have you laughing at the sometimes-humorous prose, but you'll probably ultimately wish that you hadn't traveled down that road.

Tim Dorsey has joined that small cadre of writers (Carl Hiassen, Elmore Leonard, Dave Barry) who make me laugh at the state I grew up in. FLORIDA ROADKILL is outrageous, sometimes ludicrous, but downright funny. I had to move into another room to read the book at night because my laughing kept waking my wife up. Dorsey's characters are hysterical, magnifying the best and worst of human behavior to the utter extreme. His descriptions of Florida, especially Tampa (my hometown), are so dead on I thought I was reading a travel guide. My only real issue is that the plot does take a backseat on occasion as Dorsey pulls out all the stops introducing characters, throwing them together in a neverending series of bizarre encounters, dropping them off and then picking them up again later in the narrative. It's easily forgivable, though, when you're laughing so hard at Dorsey's over-the-top descriptions that your sides hurt. I can't wait for the sequel.

Florida Roadkill is about as good a substitute for Hiaasen as you will find. If you've read all of Hiaasen's and are looking for more, you won't be disappointed in this book, or it's sequel, Hammerhead Ranch Motel. Dorsey even seems to be giving Hiaasen a nod because the main character, Serge, is just as crazy as Skink (only more diabolical) and the title seems to recall Skink's roadkill diet.

The resemblance between the two writers is perhaps not surprising since they both write for south Florida papers, Dorsey in Tampa and Hiaasen with the Miami Herald, I think.

Anyway, Dorsey is a lot like Hiaasen only with a significantly more violent twist. People are always getting bumped off, often in very creative ways. There are lots more bad guys in his books, and very few good guys. The bad guys therefore go around scamming, duping, and otherwise preying on each other, and as we all know, there's no honor among thieves. So the bodies pile up like dominoes as the plot progresses.

Dorsey also comes up with some of the most entertaining one-liners in the business. For example, he describes the people in a Florida Greyhound bus station like this: "The inability to master life hung in the air like a toxic mist."

I didn't mind the fact that there is no ending and the book continues with Hammerhead Ranch Motel. If I have one quip with Dorsey, it's that everyone seems to get shot in the face.

Sharon the cocaine-snorting floozy shoots two Canadian tourists in the face early on. Coleman gets his face shot off by the three Costa Gordons with silenced Uzi's. Then one of the Costa Gordons gets shot in the mouth by police officer Tchoupitoulas. Charles Saffron shoots the guy the Costa Gordons were roughing up about 6 times in the face, surprising even the Costa Gordons (a small island in the Carribean) with his enthusiastic viciousness. Once in a while, someone should get shot somewhere else. (Serge apparently gets shot in the chest instead of the face or head, because Dorsey can't kill him off since he needs to appear in the sequel.)

Other than the obsession with people getting their face's shot off, I liked this book.

FLORIDA ROAD KILL only could have been written by someone with a bone deep knowledge of the State of Florida. According to the jacket blurb, author Tim Dorsey was a reporter in Tampa for many years, which explains his authority over the subject matter.

The story is kind of a caper, with the bad guy being almost--okay, more--interesting than the hero. There is a vast cast of characters, in the mode of both Charles Dickens and Tom Wolfe, all heading off in various directions until, as is inevitable, their paths collide.

Since the story is set in Florida, from Tampa to tony Palm Beach and down to South Beach, ending up in the Keys, there is plenty of money involved, and sex, and kinky sex, and drugs...and murder.

The local color is terrific; as someone who has logged a respectable share of hours myself in most of these locations, I can say that Dorsey is spot on.

Dorsey's style may be an attempt to pay homage to Hemingway. While he's not Papa, his writing has great energy and he tells a riveting tale.

I was sorry when the book concluded, and I look forward to reading the sequel.

Mr. Dorsey covers much the same terrain as Carl Hiaasen's stories but with an even more sadistic nature. He creates numerous oddball scenarios in which morally-challenged slimeballs meet their doom. I found myself repeatedly laughing despite the profusion of repugnant situations and mounting body count. A fast-paced adventure that left me continually wondering how it was going to end and who would be left standing. Mr. Dorsey's macabre lunacy is somewhat similar to Mr. Hiaasen and Elmore Leonard's works and just as enjoyable. This was the first book I have read of his, but it certainly won't be the last.

Finding a book to read on the 30 minute commuter bus that keeps you entertained isn't always easy. "Florida Roadkill" made my commute much more enjoyable for three days. Former Tampa journalist took a gamble and left a steady paycheck for freelance writing. Looks like he made a smart leap.

The characters in Florida Road Kill are hilarious and are ready to leap off the pages. Dorsey's tale probably won't do much for Florida tourism but his familiarity of the Sunshine State made me remark "Hey I know where that place is!" more than once. You can call it a dark comedy, highway treasure hunt where the only seemingly redeeming characters get the big payoff...or do they?

Regretfully, Dorsey leaves the reader to buy his next book to find out how this one ends. I don't like this type of style but I guess if my paycheck depended on a series of semi-successful books, I might write like that, too! This book would make a great independent film. If there are any student filmmakers out there, check this read out!