If You Like Carl Hiaasen

updated 4/09

Big Trouble  by Dave Barry
A slapstick thriller set in Florida, featuring oddball characters. They include a homeless man who lives in a tree, a student with a squirt gun playing a game called Killer, a couple of real killers and a terrorist with a nuclear bomb in a suitcase. Also try Tricky Business which leads readers into a crazy complexity of money laundering, drug dealing, murder, sex, violence, hijacking and undercover work.

Shadows by Edna Buchanan
Saving Shadows, a historic Miami waterfront estate that's about to be bulldozed – annoying preservationists and reopening a 45-year-old unsolved murder – isn't enough to rescue its novel namesake. Staying in familiar Miami territory, Buchanan brings back the crew from Cold Case Squad for this outing: Miami PD Sgt. Craig Burch and ragtag detectives Sam Stone, Pete Nazario and, this time, Joe Corso. Also try Contents Under Pressure.

Florida Roadkill by Tim Dorsey
This is a wild-at-heart pinball machine of a novel, teeming with oddball kooks, crazies and maniacs as they careen through Florida on a kaleidoscopic crime-and-violent-mayhem spree, with stops in Tampa, Palm Beach, Cocoa Beach, Miami Beach, Key West and the Dry Tortugas…"This is Florida in all its decadence, corruption, dysfunction, cupidity, stupidity and bizarro violence. But native Floridian Tim Dorsey still loves his home state – the pure Florida that hasn't been completely paved over – and he communicates his abiding passion for its beauty and history. Also try The Stingray Shuffle where Serge takes on all comers: the Russian mob, the Jamaican mob, the cocaine cartels and spoiled frat boys.

Heartbreaker by Robert Ferrigno
It opens with a killing on a south Florida beach. Val Duran, an undercover cop, is forced to witness the murder of his partner, which has been arranged by a drug kingpin called Junior. In retaliation, Val kills two of Junior's men, but the score is far from settled. Val quits Florida fast and doesn't stop until he reaches Hollywood. Also try Flinch.

Steppin' on a Rainbow by Kinky Friedman
Kinky Friedman, author of the wildly funny Mile High Club and Spanking Watson, returns in his latest adventure, Steppin' on a Rainbow, which leaves behind his usual settings of Texas and New York and takes the Kinkster all the way to Hawaii. When Kinky receives a phone call from journalist Will Hoover, he learns that one of his best buddies, Mike McGovern, has disappeared while vacationing on the island. Also try Kill Two Birds & Get Stoned.

LaBrava by Elmore Leonard
This is vintage Leonard: a blend of the true-to-life and the totally make-believe, the cinematic and the suspenseful, the world we know and a whole lot of worlds we're glad we don't. Only Leonard can concoct such a potent cocktail: one part raw humanity, one part pure insanity, a dash of lethal action and his irresistible, eccentric spice.Joe La Brava is an ex-Secret Service agent who gets mixed up in a South Miami Beach scam involving a redneck former cop, a Cuban hit man who moonlights as a go-go dancer and a one-time movie queen whose world is part make-believe, part deadly dangerous. This is vintage Leonard: fast-moving, pitch-perfect and utterly, authentically irresistible. Also try Rum Punch where a gun dealer, a flight attendant and a bail bondsman make interesting bedfellows.

Fluke by Christopher Moore
Just why do humpback whales sing? That's the question that has marine behavioral biologist Nate Quinn and his crew poking, charting, recording and photographing very big, wet, gray marine mammals. Until the extraordinary day when a whale lifts its tail into the air to display a cryptic message spelled out in foot-high letters: “Bite me.” Trouble is, Nate's beginning to wonder if he hasn't spent just a little too much time in the sun. 'Cause no one else on his team saw a thing – not his longtime partner, Clay Demodocus; not their saucy young research assistant; not even the spliff-puffing white-boy Rastaman Kona. But later, when a roll of film returns from the lab missing the crucial tail shot – and his research facility is trashed – Nate realizes something very fishy indeed is going on. Also try The Island of the Sequined Love Nun.

The Color of Magic by Terry Pratchett (Science Fiction)
Pratchett's profoundly irreverent, bestselling novels have garnered him a revered position in the halls of parody next to the likes of Mark Twain, Kurt Vonnegut, Douglas Adams and Carl Hiaasen. The Color of Magic is Terry Pratchett's maiden voyage through the now-legendary land of Discworld. This is where it all begins – with the tourist Twoflower and his wizard guide, Rincewind.

The Naked Detective by Laurence Shames
The gumshoe bit wasn’t Peter Amsterdam’s idea. His accountant made him do it. But Pete should have figured that with a comfortable tax dodge in the sunny Florida Keys comes the inevitable knockout blonde looking for help. Sometimes life can be like the movies. Unfortunately for Pete, it isn’t black and white. And fast on the blonde’s stiletto heels is a hotshot Key West thug, his nympho daughter, a goon in control of the islands’ gambling boats and a stone-cold corpse whose unexpected appearance has stripped Pete down to his last nerve. Also try Welcome to Paradise.