Rating: 
Summary: Great Place To Start - Wonderful to Read
Review: Tourist Season gives us transplanted Floridian's a dream of going home, even though our home doesn't exist anymore. Regardless of however tragic they may be, Hiaasen's flawed and funny characters make some of us ex-Floridian's long for a way to recapture a home that no longer exists.
Jimmy Buffett said it best, "You wonder why you ever go home." It's a great book, see Florida through Skip Wiley's eyes.
Rating: 
Summary: An Ironic Delight That Makes Fun of Almost Everyone!
Review: Tourist Season is a great name for this book. We all know that the snow birds begin to arrive in Florida after Thanksgiving and stay until the snows have melted up north. Mr. Hiaasen adds another unforgettable meaning: It's like "hunting season."
Fed up with the destruction of Florida's natural beauty, plant life and animals, Mr. Hiaasen creates one of the great comic anti-heroes in crime fiction, Skip Wiley, who knows how to wield the public relations baton with skill . . . but with too much zeal, and not enough heart.
Many sections of this book would make outstanding short stories or novellas if separated from the rest of the story. The overall structure of the story is complex, multi-faceted in its purposes and cleverly ironic in its tone and details. Clearly, Mr. Hiaasen worked very hard on this book before publishing it.
The president of the Greater Miami Chamber of Commerce ends up dead, slathered with sun tan lotion in a suitcase. Tourists also begin to turn up missing. The police decide that it's all unconnected, and not too important. That frustrates those who are doing the killings . . . and they seek to gain more credit for their wrong-doing. What is their purpose? Why, to persuade tourists to leave the state, never to return.
The book develops a number of interesting themes including how terrorists think that the ends justify the means, the situational ethics of the press and reporters, the way the police just want to be left alone . . . even when they aren't succeeding, and how some will be cowed into silence when even the most despicable deeds are done. As usual in a Hiaasen book, the book has lots of examples of corruption, blatant abuse of others for one's own self interest and struggles to do the right thing among the aspiring virtuous.
Normally, I would grade such a fine novel to be a five star effort. Two things prevented me. First, the book really rubs your nose into the tourist killings . . . far too long and in too much depth for my taste. Second, one of the characters has a chance to stop the mayhem and doesn't act. I wasn't pleased with how that transgression played out in the story.
The ending sequence is beautifully done and it's well worth reading the whole book just to enjoy this one section.
Rating:
Summary: Hiaasen unleashed ... painfully funny!
Review: Tourist Season is Carl Hiaasen's first novel, a very impressive debut. What really shines through is his bitter satire with a comic touch; very wicked indeed! One also has to be impressed with how the prose and (often crude) langauge flow so well - Tourist Season is an effortless read.As for the plot, well here things are a bit messy. The story involves a hapless gang of 'revolutionaries' looking to chase out all tourists and snowbirds from south Florida because, well, south Florida was much nicer before all this development stuff started. Caught in action are sleazy Miami city officials, crazy newspaper writers, a beauty queen and, of course, a few tourists who fall victim to these revolutionaries. Actually, this 'mess' is a lot of fun but it does run out of steam towards the end ... by which time I felt tired of Hiaasen's "gee, I hate everyone who moved to south Florida after me!" attitude. Having said this, much of his sarcasm is very well focused. Bottom line: a delightful, non-stop attack on Miami and the uglier side of Americans. While perhaps some of the humor is too American-centric for folks this side of the Atlantic, all others will find much to enjoy with Tourist Season. Recommended. (PS - Hiaasen's later works, such as Strip Tease, is even better.)
Rating:
Summary: Excellent
Review: Very good book. The book even with the murders is still very funny. It also has some very sexy romantic scenes. Carl Hiaasen is a very talented author. A must read!
Rating:
Summary: Fast paced, black comedy-mystery.
Review: Well written, fast comedy, mystery, gum shoe story. Some violent scenes but full of laughs and surpises.
Rating:
Summary: Interesting and twisted.......Hiaasen is great!
Review: When tourists begin to disappear leaving behind minor traces of themselves, a private investigator partially discovers the truth and is unable to tell the police. If he betrays what he knows, many more people will be endangered, and so begins another Hiaasen wild ride of a novel. The story focuses on the destruction of Florida from the invasion of Northern "idiots", for the sake of the almighty dollar. When one man goes over the edge in his zeal to protect his beloved state, nobody is safe from his reach.Tourist Season is interesting, twisted and has a dark comic undertow, classic Hiaasen hallmarks!!
Rating:
Summary: A fun time-waster of a book
Review: Wow, lots of interesting surprises thrown into this novel! Aligators and crocodiles, shriners, swamps, tourists, football, and parades all join in the mayhem that ensues when a pseudo-terrorist group tries to chase tourists out of Florida. And what's more, the characters seem to experience personal growth along the way. What more could you want?
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