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Summary: Hiaasen's first one of his best
Review: Carl Hiaasen established himself as a highly prolific humor/mystery writer with "Tourist Season". This first effort introduces the reader to several recurring characters that appear throughout his other novels, and I recommend that you start with this book before reading his others. Main villain Skip Wiley delights with his daring wit and unrelenting fervor against those who want to pave Florida at nature's expense. A must-read, in my opinion.
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Summary: Bad stuff happens to tourists in lawless south Florida
Review: Carl Hiaasen is the master of the comedic absurd, but here's the thing: if you know a bit about south Florida, where virtually all his inane and hilarious novels are set, you know it's all too possible for this stuff to really happen. I suspect he gets inspiration for the outrageous details in his books from the daily newspaper.
This one starts with a tourist Shriner who disappears while taking a little dip in the quiet ocean. Then a legless city official is found dead, stuffed in a suitcase with a rubber alligator stuck down his throat. More stiffs turn up, and there's a weird (no surprise to Hiaasen's regular readers) theme connecting them.
A fun and funny read, and it heralded the many others that followed this debut of sorts.
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Summary: If you've never read Hiaasen before, or even if you have...
Review: Hiaasen is a GENIUS! Tourist Season was my first Hiassen book, and it was a beautiful start to my Hiassen reading rage. Since Tourist Season, I've read 3 more by C.H., and I'm not done yet.Carl Hiaasen's style has always surprised me. Each one of his stories begins with what seems like many many separate, totally independent stories. Somehow, within a few hundred pages, each one of those stories become closely tied with every other one. Tourist Season had me laughing hysterically, more than any other Hiaasen book I think. Being a South Floridian, I've also traveled to most of the places described in this and other books. I find his depiction of the South Florida ecosystems splendid. Tourist Season especially evokes a genuine concern for the loss of Florida's natural land, and the final scene in the book is simply heart-wrenching. The perfect dose of humor coupled with a great look into natural Florida, away from Disney World and South Beach, I recommend Tourist Season to everyone, anywhere in the US. Definitely a good book to buy and keep forever.
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Summary: Great Idea
Review: I was surprised to see that Tourist Season was published almost 20 years ago. It is still a good read today and the issues are still the same: people coming to Florida to retire and die and people coming to Florida on vacation and exploiting the state and the natives.
For me, as a resident of Florida, Tourist Season resonated with my concerns. Tourism creates jobs but they are bad jobs. And despite the Everglades and opportunity for ecotourism, most tourists come to Florida to enter the brightly painted plastic and concrete world of Mickey. Retirees present longer lasting problems.
The title "Tourist Season" is a clever pun on one group of concerned citizens' plan to deal with tourism. In an attempt to reduce Florida's image as one big happy sunshiny beach they being a series of planned attacks on tourism. The idea is to scare off the tourists to protect Florida's ecosystem and economy. Killings and kidnappings are the plan of attack. What seems like an obvious warning to the anti-tourist revolutionaries - a dismembered city official covered in sunscreen and placed in a suitcase with a rubber alligator in his mouth - is written off by police as an oddity and not a political message.
Tourist Season follows an ex-reporter's attempt to find the killers and the killers' attempt to get the press to notice what they are doing so that tourists and retirees will stay out of Florida. It is entertaining and cleverly written. If you aren't Florida and even if you are the constant environmentalist messages may bother you. Hiassen definitely has a one issue approach for why tourists are bad.
Tourist Season is full of dark humor that still resonates today.
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Summary: If you enjoy dark humor, you'll like this book
Review: I was told by a number of people that I would love this author's books, but in this one at least, I personally found the humor too dark at times for my taste. There's something creepy about mixing humor with people getting killed in grisly ways.
That having been said, substantial parts of this book are very funny, and it's well-written. It holds your attention well even though you kind of know what's happening (unlike most mysteries).
Set in Miami, the book begins with a dead tourist and then another one. The Chamber of Commerce is desperate to hush this up because they don't want a few tourist killings to hurt Miami tourism. A former newspaper reporter, disillusioned and now a private investigator, manages to get mixed up in this and suspects he knows who is responsible. He sets out to find the killer and protect the innocent -- a young woman he fears is in harm's way.
This isn't really much of a mystery, certainly not the kind of murder mystery you might expect -- you know early on who is doing it and even why, but the book tells of the attempts to find and capture them. Concern for the environment of South Florida sometimes starts to grate (at least it did for me -- I have absolutely no control of what happens to the Everglades so why is he lecturing me?)
The humor is sophisticated, but a lot of people really love this author. He has a cult following, and it's worth checking him out to see if you agree. As for me, I'm not entirely sure I'd read more books by him, but I haven't ruled it out.
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Summary: Highly Entertaining
Review: I won't reveal much of the plot here, as there are some twists and turns, some more predictable than others. The story is about a group of terrorists who try to make Florida unappealing to tourists and retirees so they leave in droves. And they attempt to achieve this goal by having a few dead bodies turn up. I found this to be a very entertaining book, with interesting characters, and a plot that moves briskly along through a number of twists and turns. The leader of the terrorist group is more interesting than the hero. I found his heart in the right place, even though his methods had a lot to be desired. He is smart and cunning, yet unbalanced enough to keep you constantly cringing that something really bad is about to happen. The villain steals the show, but the other characters are interesting enough to flesh out the story. This was my first book by Hiaasen, who was highly recommended by friends, and it certainly will not be my last.
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Summary: if you like elmore leonard...
Review: If you like Elmore Leonard, give this book a try. I read it on an airplane and found it quite enjoyable.
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Summary: Hiaasen's Best.
Review: In this novel, a group of radicals called the Nights of December are picking off the tourists of Florida. Their plan: return it to its natural state.... give it back to the Seminole Indians and the animals who lived there before the tourist boom. Journalist Skip Wiley, the mastermind of this cell, is a charasmatic and oddly likeable character, even if he is the "bad guy" you find yourself on some level wishing him luck! Wonderful story. Simply wonderful
Rating: 
Summary: More an amusing satire than a crime mystery
Review: Set in Miami, this satiric novel of eco-terrorism concerns a newspaper reporter turned private eye who is pitted against a former colleague turned leader of a terrorist cell. Skip Wiley, the crazed ringleader, wants to return Florida to the Seminoles and everglades by driving tourists out through terror. It's lightweight, of course, but it's certainly amusing, has colorful characters and, with its sharp satire of everything from tourism to race relations to the newsroom, makes high entertainment out of mayhem. Hiaasen is very good at keeping the reader guessing, giving background on minor characters doomed to become crocodile food and others who merely fade away, so that it's hard to tell which of the main characters will make it alive to the end. The book is marred slightly by a few gaps of credibility, even for a farce (for example, the police center on one date only for a possible attack, not considering an equally possible date even after the first passes uneventfully). In all, though, it's a fine, funny thriller, with a satisfyingly ambiguous ending.
Rating:
Summary: Highly Entertaining
Review: This is the Carl Hiaasen we know. He turns his black comedy and satire as it relates to the ever current problem of the influx of people to South Florida. A Shriner disappears leaving only his fez behind. Another local business booster is found dead with an toy alligator in his throat. You will start to want to see what the villain of the story does next, for he is more interesting than the hero. You will not want to put this book down. What I also like about his books is if you know a bit about South Florida you can see these things really happening. I did not want to give the plot away, for their are some twist and turns you will enjoy. And the title of the book is highly suggestive. So if you want a fun read, open "Tourist Seaosn".
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