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Tourist Season by Carl Hiaasen
Reader Reviews 1 of 1 people found the following review helpful: More an amusing satire than a crime mystery, January 26, 2003 Reviewer: ensiform from Dallas, TX USA 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.
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