Cadillac Beach / Tim Dorsey
This is the second novel of Dorsey's I have read, and it's better than Hammerhead Hotel. Dorsey seems to have looked at the market for novels involving crime in Florida, and thought, "You know, Carl Hiaasen is just not surreal enough." One of the thing that just about every Florida writer seems ot have in common is a love for the state's past, mixed up a hatred for the way it is now. John D. MacDopnald write about the same scumbag developers that the modern guys write about.

Having been in the Orlando area for the last few months, I understand where these guys are coming from. Though they do seem full of an attitude they also decry: "we were here first, so can we close the door on any new residents now?"

Anyway, Cadillac Beach almost falls over under the weight of its own constant invention, but it holds together better than Hammerhead did. And there was one moment I found memorably comic.

At one point, the protagonist Serge Storms has gotten his stolen limo shot up by mobsters. To hide the bullet holes, he buys a bunch of those decals that look like fake bullets holes to hide the real ones. It’s a funny throwaway bit.