Customer Reviews

Pineapple Grenade: A Novel

5 star:		(11)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(6)

 

 

This has to be the first time that I did NOT like one of the books from this series. While all of these books revel in the confusion that is Serge and Tim Dorsey, it didn't seem to work in this particular book. Most of Tim's book are info-dumps at times and it is up to you to pick out what is going to be important...then you learn it is ALL going to be important, in this book the info-dumps just didn't seem to add up to anything worth getting excited about.

I have to agree with the reviewer who is wondering if this is going to be "a slippery slope", I too am wondering the same thing.

One thing for sure is that I have never been bored by a Serge Storms book until now. I felt like I wanted to skim it just to see if something interesting was going to happen. I was surprised to see only a modicum of murders in this book.

Love the way Dorsey always introduces a boat-load of characters and weaves them together by the end. Love his McGyver/Grand Guignol executions of The Rude and improperly homicidal. Love the history lessons and semi-sane rants by our caffeine fueled hero.

About 2/3 of the way through the book things got very straight-ahead spy storyish.
Some of the characters were given short shrift, such as the spy couple, El Presidente, the two CIA station chiefs. Johnny Vegas and Mahoney make perfunctery appearances and surely deserve more if they are included at all.

So there was a flattening-out, simplification, and loss of energy that I hope were just a flounder's fluke and not a trend. I'm worried, but still a big fan.

I am a huge Tim Dorsey fan, but this book was a disappointment. I did not find it very funny, and the plot, with all the espionage craziness, was TOO complicated to follow. It is the first time I almost gave up on one of his books before finishing.

I've enjoyed all of Tim Dorsey's book's and normally I'll read a Serge Storm novel in a day or two, this one took about four, I did not have a problem setting it down at all. Pineapple Grenade was a little boring and did not have the same suspense that the previous books have had. I did enjoy the mentions of Stiltsville, Florida and the other interesting tidbits about Florida that Serge discovers in the book. Overall I give it a 4 out of 5 stars, because at the end of the day I cannot get enough of Serge and Coleman.

what a disappointment. from the genius and comic satire of previous books dorsey has sunk to jimmy buffet's level: i can now sell any crap if my name is on it. dorsey should have a money back item on his books now.

Bad reviews and too high a price! Bad reviews and too high a price! Bad reviews and too high a price! Bad reviews and too high a price!

First off, I'm a B-I-G fan of Dorsey's, and have been since he hit the scene with 'Florida Roadkill'. I'm a died in the wool fan of books which use Florida as their backdrop (no other place compares to the nuttiness contained within it's borders), and cut my teeth on John MacDonald, Elmore Leonard, Carl Hiiasen et al. Dorsey is the heir apparent to those literary giants, and I depend on him for my fix of Florida madness, where fact is always stranger than fiction.
I usually rip through each new Dorsey offering in a day or two. This one...............not so much. It took about a week, and I had to force myself to pick it back up at times. I found myself wondering if Dorsey had a ghost writer for this one, because it's not the usual tightly wound, jack-hammer, Serge Storms sley ride I've become accustomed to. That, and this is his second offering within three months, as well. Maybe it's just writer's fatigue from trying to do too much for his fans, (or his bank account?). I found the book to be too loosely connected, the characters not as vivid and lively. It seems disjointed much of the time, like things weren't connecting well.
I'm certainly not going to give up on Dorsey. I've come too far with him, and hey, everyone has flat spots in their careers. If he were a baseball player he'd be hitting around .933 right now, and that ain't bad. Hall of Fame material, for sure. Take some time off, Tim, and come back refreshed and swinging for the fences with that Serge Storms' lumber. We'll all still be sitting in the stands waiting for you.

this book was not Dorcey's usual greatness. It was as if he has put all he can in the previous books and just come up with some 3rd rate leftovers for this one. I will not buy another one. Sad that it was not better.

I love Serge and Coleman and usually adore anything by Tim. However, it seemed like there were too many threads going on at the same time that just made it difficult to keep everything straight. Each one of the plot lines could have made for its own interesting novel but it was difficult to keep pace.

Two Serge A. Storms books in three months?! Is that too much of a good thing? No. There is actually no such thing as too much of a good thing, and for Tim Dorsey to follow WHEN ELVES ATTACK with PINEAPPLE GRENADE is Exhibit A for that proposition. While this may not be the best of Dorsey's chronicle of Florida's most inventive serial killer, it contains some of his best writing, hands down. Yes, I know, it's complicated. I'll write now and explain later. Maybe.

PINEAPPLE GRENADE is Dorsey dipping his toe into the ocean of the espionage thriller genre. Is it a satire? Sure. Does it work? Sometimes. As has occasionally happened in some of the other installments of this series, Dorsey gets carried away with the sounds of the voices in his head. So it is that at one extremely complicated point in the book, I totally lost track of the plot. Check that: I lost track of part of the plot.

Serge, instead of killing people, gets involved in attempting to protect the president of a Latin American democracy who appears to be the target of an assassination that is to take place during the Meeting of the Americas conference in Miami. Serge and his sidekick, the eternally soused Coleman, are on a mission to make the town safe for innocent visitors of all stripes and continues to be extremely adept at coming up with new, original, and yes, painful ways of executing carjackers, wife beaters and the like who happen to cross his path. Serge also falls in love (or something like it) with a sultry lass named Felicia, who wants to keep the president of her beloved country alive. With Serge on her side, the bad guys wouldn't seem to stand a chance, but they do.

The problem with PINEAPPLE GRENADE is that Dorsey becomes so fixated on establishing the alleged ineptitude of the CIA that it threatens to derail the book. Not to worry, though. Just keep plowing through, even when things get a little rough. There are plenty of Serge's trademark trivia drops, one of which involves a strip club with a flying saucer mounted on the roof and another in which he mentions my all-time favorite episode of the immortal "Miami Vice" (the television series, not the feature film). So aside from some rough sledding (or should we call that water-skiing?) through the plot, PINEAPPLE GRENADE features all of the elements that we love and expect in a Storms novel: manic dialogue, surreal vignettes (wait until you read what occurs at the Diplomats' Ball), fascinating Florida trivia, and murders by the dozen.

But wait, there's more! What will really knock you back here is Dorsey's demonstration of literary derring-do where not once, but twice, he sets the clock ticking and actually puts his readers on the edge of their collective seats. Keep in mind that the Storms series feeds off of a comfortably familiar but always hilarious template. We don't really expect to be surprised by the end result; it's how Serge gets there that provides the entertainment. There's a bit of a change-up or two here, where Dorsey stretches his previously demonstrated talents in another direction and kicks posterior. I will tell you that if he wanted to write straight spy/thriller fiction under a pseudonym, he could probably do it if he felt like reigning himself in just a bit, plot-wise.

Dorsey may be known as a brilliant humorist, but there is a depth to his talent that has yet to be fully explored. We get a hint of it in PINEAPPLE GRENADE. Get through the convoluted plot, and you will be more than amply rewarded.

Reviewed by Joe Hartlaub