Tourist Season
First edition
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| Author | Carl Hiaasen |
|---|---|
| Cover artist | George Corsillo |
| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
| Genre | Crime novel |
| Publisher | G. P. Putnam's Sons |
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Publication date
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1986 |
| Media type | Print (hardback and paperback) |
| Pages | 272 |
| ISBN | |
| OCLC | 12663997 |
| 813/.54 19 | |
| LC Class | PS3558.I217 T68 1986 |
| Followed by | Double Whammy |
Tourist Season is a 1986 novel by Carl Hiaasen. It was his first solo novel, after co-writing several mystery/thriller novels with William Montalbano.
Las Noches de Diciembre (Spanish, "The Nights of December") is a small terrorist cell led by renegade newspaper columnist Skip Wiley, a brilliant-but-insane Uncle Duke-like character, as El Fuego. Wiley believes that the only way to save Florida's natural beauty from destruction is to violently dissuade tourists from visiting and/or settling in the state. Recruiting three comrades with similar axes to grind against the Florida establishment, they begin a spree of flashy kidnappings, murders, and bombings to frighten off new arrivals into the Sunshine State.
Fittingly, their first victim is B.D. "Sparky" Harper, the head of the Greater Miami Chamber of Commerce. Harper's body is found stuffed into an oversized suitcase, dressed in a garish tourist outfit and smeared with suntan oil, and with his legs amputated. Next, Wiley's gang starts kidnapping and murdering random tourists and Florida residents, many of whom are fed to a giant North American Crocodile (nicknamed "Pavlov").
Brian Keyes, a private investigator and former news reporter for the Miami Sun, is hired by the Public Defender's office to help defend the police's prime suspect in Sparky Harper's murder, a petty burglar named Ernesto Cabal, who was caught driving Harper's stolen car. Brian is inclined to believe that Harper's murder is much too bizarre to be Ernesto's work, but the Miami police, in their eagerness to close the case, dismiss him. Ernesto commits suicide when his own lawyer states that the case is a lost cause.
Brian is then hired by Nell Bellamy (the wife of the first tourist victim) to find her missing husband, and by his old mentor, Sun editor Cab Mulcahy, to locate Wiley, who has disappeared.
After an uncomfortable encounter with Wiley's girlfriend, Jenna (Brian's ex-girlfriend), Keyes tracks Wiley to a cabin in the Everglades, where he is abducted by Las Noches. Wiley reveals himself as the group's leader, and tells Brian that his job is to return to Miami (alive), and spread the word of Las Noches demands. But Wiley also says that he is not ready to have his own role exposed yet, and warns Brian that if he does so, then the violence will escalate, immediately and horribly. To drive home the fact that Las Noches is serious, Wiley has Keyes witness as their latest victim, retiree Ida Kimmelman, is fed to Pavlov. Keyes tries to stop the murder, and is stabbed in the back by one of the gang, a Cuban named Jesús Bernal. Keyes is returned to the city and treated in the hospital.
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