Tourist Season
Encyclopedia
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.
-like character. 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.
Since it is the start of the tourist season, the police's initial reaction to Keyes's warnings is to cover up, dismissing the Las Noches communiques as a hoax. The terrorists retaliate by triggering several bombs in public places, forcing the authorities to take them seriously. Keyes's old friend, Detective Al Garcia is appointed head of a task force to catch the terrorists.
Based on Wiley's hints, Keyes, Mulcahy, and Garcia deduce that the terrorists plan to kidnap Miami's much-touted Orange Bowl
Queen, in the most spectacularly public fashion possible. Since the civic leaders flatly refuse to cancel the Orange Bowl Parade, or to allow police guards to be seen near the beauty queen, Garcia suggests hiring Keyes as her undercover bodyguard.
Keyes is pleasantly surprised when the recently-crowned beauty queen, Kara Lynn Shivers (19), turns out to be an intelligent, self-possessed, and thoroughly sensible person. She actually hates the whole beauty queen "racket," and takes part only to indulge her father's fanatic dreams of making her a star. She and Keyes quickly find common ground and grow closer, eventually developing a relationship.
While escorting her home from a tennis game, Keyes catches Jesús Bernal loitering in the parking lot, doing a lackluster job of surveilling the Orange Bowl Queen. Bernal is not paying enough attention, and Keyes beats him soundly, armed with nothing but a tennis racket.
Furious, Wiley informs the gang that Bernal has thrown away their psychological advantage by revealing himself and their plans too soon. To regain it, Wiley announces that he's devised a new plan.
Bernal, simmering with humiliation and aching for reinstatement with the anti-Castro
terrorist group he was expelled from, decides to proceed with his own agenda. Abandoning Las Noches, he sends a mail bomb to Al Garcia, whom he identifies as a "traitor" to the anti-Castro movement. Farcically, the bomb is instead opened by over-eager Sun reporter Ricky Bloodworth, illegally sifting Garcia's mail for clues about the terrorists. Because of Bernal's poor construction, the bomb does not kill Bloodworth, it only injures him. Garcia never learns that the bomb was addressed to him, and the bombing is attributed to Wiley's gang.
The next evening, Wiley unleashes his new plan: buzzing the deck of the pre-Orange Bowl Friendship Cruise out at sea in a helicopter
, Wiley promises to give the tourists on board some "real Florida souvenirs," and drops hundreds of shopping bags from posh vendors onto the deck - which, when ripped open by the frenzied tourists, contain live snakes. Chaos envelops the deck of the cruise ship, and one foolish passenger yells "abandon ship!" causing all of them to dive off into the ocean. As the Coast Guard
is rescuing them, the helicopter flies away, but unexpectedly crashes at sea before it reaches land. No bodies are recovered.
Believing that Las Noches are dead, the Miami civil leaders breathe a sigh of relief. Keyes and Garcia remain skeptical, however, and insist that their security precautions remain in place until after the Orange Bowl Parade.
In a last-ditch attempt at redemption, Jesús Bernal kidnaps Garcia at gunpoint and drives him out to Key Largo
for a flashy execution. Garcia is wounded in the shoulder by Bernal's shotgun, but Keyes manages to track them down and kills Bernal with a pistol shot.
To Keyes's surprise, the Parade comes and goes without any sign of Wiley or his gang. The next day, Cab Mulcahy writes his own front-page account of the tourist murders, revealing his own knowledge of Wiley's role in the killings and apologizing to his readers for withholding it.
The evening after the Parade is the Orange Bowl game itself. In the stands, Keyes realizes, belatedly, that Kara Lynn is supposed to make a brief appearance during the game's halftime show. With all their security measures focused on the Parade, the game is a perfect opportunity for Las Noches, alive and well, to strike. In the chaos, Kara Lynn is kidnapped and carried out of the stadium on an airboat, though one of the gang, ex-football player "Viceroy" Wilson is shot to death by a Shriner friend of Theodore Bellamy, acting as Kara Lynn's unofficial escort.
With the police rushing around in confusion, Keyes goes directly to Jenna's house and examines Wiley's old press clippings. Quickly deducing where Wiley has gone, Keyes drags Jenna along with him.
Wiley has taken Kara Lynn to Osprey
Island, a small nature preserve in the middle of Biscayne Bay
. When Kara Lynn recovers from her drugged sleep, Wiley is taken aback, and sorrowful, that she is, contrary to his expectations, an intelligent and unspoiled young woman. Regretfully he reveals his final plan: the surface of the island has been mined with dynamite
, to be exploded at dawn, to allow for the construction of a snazzy new condominium
complex. Wiley plans to leave Kara Lynn there, with the island's other remaining wildlife, just to illustrate to the greedy developers of Florida the consequences of their rampant development - as he puts it, the birds, trees, and butterflies that inhabit the island have zero value to such people, but they might stop and think if their dynamite blows up the only species on earth they actually care about: "a future customer."
Before Wiley can go, however, Keyes arrives and disables Wiley with a bullet to the leg. The fisherman who dropped Keyes off refused to wait around, so Keyes demands to know where Wiley anchored his boat. At first, Wiley refuses to tell, prepared to let the dynamite claim himself, Keyes, and Kara Lynn all at once. But he is horrified to learn that Keyes has brought Jenna along, and surrenders the boat's location. To Keyes's surprise, he refuses to go along with them, preferring to stay on the island.
As they speed away from the island, Keyes, Kara Lynn, and Jenna look back and see an amazing spectacle: Wiley is climbing a tree (bad leg and all), trying feverishly to scare a bald eagle
nesting there into taking flight before the dynamite explodes. The novel ends just as the "all clear" signal for the detonation is sounded, with the three of them whispering the same prayer: "Please fly away."
genre, but a satire
as well, of many subjects from tourism to sports to race relations to the newsroom. It also contains examples of the literary
device of the red herring
; for example, deep background is given to characters who appear briefly only to die off, which keeps the reader guessing as to who will make it to the end of the book.
Hiaasen is a newspaper columnist from the Miami Herald. In an interview, he said that he took much of his inspiration from his work on the Herald. Readers may believe that Skip Wiley is a slightly more crazed version of the author; both are newspaper columnists, and both are very passionate and entertaining writers. One theme that persists in the book is moral ambiguity; while Brian Keyes understands the value of Skip Wiley's ends, Skip Wiley would have preferred a less violent means. Their conflict arises as a matter of where they place their allegiance: Brian Keyes to humankind, and Skip Wiley to the wild.
Hiaasen's novels typically deal with distinctly Floridian themes such as environmental destruction of unique ecosystems, the inability to sustain rapid growth, and crooked politicians, among others.
, beginning with Hiaasen's first, Tourist Season
. To date, he has appeared in four of Hiaasen's novels, and often acts as an important ally to the novel's main protagonist.
In the film version
of Strip Tease, he was portrayed by Armand Assante
.
Garcia emigrated from Cuba
as a young boy; certain family members stayed behind, including a sister who married a Cuban Army officer. Having arrived in America with virtually nothing, he joined the Metro-Dade County police and eventually became a detective in the Homicide
Division. His superiors look on him fondly as "an excellent detective with no ambition to be anything more."
In Tourist Season he investigates several suspicious deaths of tourists, but is initially censured when he suggests that an extremist group is targeting tourists. When the fact becomes impossible to ignore, he is put in charge of a special task force to catch the terrorists. One of the terrorists, Jesus Bernal, trying to raise his own prestige among anti-Castro
Cubans in Florida, labels Garcia a "traitor" and kidnaps him at gunpoint. Garcia receives a non-fatal wound to his shoulder from Bernal's shotgun (that continues to bother him in subsequent novels) before Bernal is stopped. He spends the book's climax recovering in the hospital.
In Tourist Season he is married, with at least one adult daughter. At the time of Strip Tease, he has re-married, to a woman named Donna (whom he met while arresting her then-husband for a drug-related murder) and become stepfather to her two young children.
1986 in literature
The year 1986 in literature involved some significant events and new books.-Events:*Michael Grade. Controller of BBC One, axes plans to televise Ian Curteis's The Falklands Play.-New books:*Kingsley Amis - The Old Devils...
novel
Novel
A novel is a book of long narrative in literary prose. The genre has historical roots both in the fields of the medieval and early modern romance and in the tradition of the novella. The latter supplied the present generic term in the late 18th century....
by Carl Hiaasen
Carl Hiaasen
Carl Hiaasen is an American journalist, columnist and novelist.- Early years :Born in 1953 and raised in Plantation, Florida, of Norwegian heritage, Hiaasen was the first of four children and the son of a lawyer, Kermit Odel, and teacher, Patricia...
. It was his first solo novel, after co-writing several mystery/thriller novels with William Montalbano.
Plot
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 DukeUncle Duke
Uncle Duke is a fictional character in the comic strip Doonesbury by Garry Trudeau.He is nominally Zonker Harris's uncle, albeit an "uncle by courtesy" only. Duke was originally a straightforward caricature of the late gonzo journalist Hunter S...
-like character. Wiley believes that the only way to save Florida
Florida
Florida is a state in the southeastern United States, located on the nation's Atlantic and Gulf coasts. It is bordered to the west by the Gulf of Mexico, to the north by Alabama and Georgia and to the east by the Atlantic Ocean. With a population of 18,801,310 as measured by the 2010 census, it...
's natural beauty from destruction is to violently dissuade tourists
Tourism
Tourism is travel for recreational, leisure or business purposes. The World Tourism Organization defines tourists as people "traveling to and staying in places outside their usual environment for not more than one consecutive year for leisure, business and other purposes".Tourism has become a...
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
Miami, Florida
Miami is a city located on the Atlantic coast in southeastern Florida and the county seat of Miami-Dade County, the most populous county in Florida and the eighth-most populous county in the United States with a population of 2,500,625...
Chamber of Commerce
Chamber of commerce
A chamber of commerce is a form of business network, e.g., a local organization of businesses whose goal is to further the interests of businesses. Business owners in towns and cities form these local societies to advocate on behalf of the business community...
. 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
American Crocodile
The American crocodile is a species of crocodilian found in the Neotropics. It is the most widespread of the four extant species of crocodiles from the Americas. Populations occur from the Atlantic and Pacific coasts of southern Mexico to South America as far as Peru and Venezuela. It also lives...
(nicknamed "Pavlov
Ivan Pavlov
Ivan Petrovich Pavlov was a famous Russian physiologist. Although he made significant contributions to psychology, he was not in fact a psychologist himself but was a mathematician and actually had strong distaste for the field....
").
Brian Keyes, a private investigator
Private investigator
A private investigator , private detective or inquiry agent, is a person who can be hired by individuals or groups to undertake investigatory law services. Private detectives/investigators often work for attorneys in civil cases. Many work for insurance companies to investigate suspicious claims...
and former news reporter for the Miami Sun, is hired by the Public Defender
Public defender
The term public defender is primarily used to refer to a criminal defense lawyer appointed to represent people charged with a crime but who cannot afford to hire an attorney in the United States and Brazil. The term is also applied to some ombudsman offices, for example in Jamaica, and is one way...
'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
Everglades
The Everglades are subtropical wetlands in the southern portion of the U.S. state of Florida, comprising the southern half of a large watershed. The system begins near Orlando with the Kissimmee River, which discharges into the vast but shallow Lake Okeechobee...
, 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.
Since it is the start of the tourist season, the police's initial reaction to Keyes's warnings is to cover up, dismissing the Las Noches communiques as a hoax. The terrorists retaliate by triggering several bombs in public places, forcing the authorities to take them seriously. Keyes's old friend, Detective Al Garcia is appointed head of a task force to catch the terrorists.
Based on Wiley's hints, Keyes, Mulcahy, and Garcia deduce that the terrorists plan to kidnap Miami's much-touted Orange Bowl
Orange Bowl
The Orange Bowl is an annual American college football bowl game played at Sun Life Stadium in Miami Gardens, Florida. It has been played annually since January 1, 1935 and celebrated its 75th playing on January 1, 2009...
Queen, in the most spectacularly public fashion possible. Since the civic leaders flatly refuse to cancel the Orange Bowl Parade, or to allow police guards to be seen near the beauty queen, Garcia suggests hiring Keyes as her undercover bodyguard.
Keyes is pleasantly surprised when the recently-crowned beauty queen, Kara Lynn Shivers (19), turns out to be an intelligent, self-possessed, and thoroughly sensible person. She actually hates the whole beauty queen "racket," and takes part only to indulge her father's fanatic dreams of making her a star. She and Keyes quickly find common ground and grow closer, eventually developing a relationship.
While escorting her home from a tennis game, Keyes catches Jesús Bernal loitering in the parking lot, doing a lackluster job of surveilling the Orange Bowl Queen. Bernal is not paying enough attention, and Keyes beats him soundly, armed with nothing but a tennis racket.
Furious, Wiley informs the gang that Bernal has thrown away their psychological advantage by revealing himself and their plans too soon. To regain it, Wiley announces that he's devised a new plan.
Bernal, simmering with humiliation and aching for reinstatement with the anti-Castro
Fidel Castro
Fidel Alejandro Castro Ruz is a Cuban revolutionary and politician, having held the position of Prime Minister of Cuba from 1959 to 1976, and then President from 1976 to 2008. He also served as the First Secretary of the Communist Party of Cuba from the party's foundation in 1961 until 2011...
terrorist group he was expelled from, decides to proceed with his own agenda. Abandoning Las Noches, he sends a mail bomb to Al Garcia, whom he identifies as a "traitor" to the anti-Castro movement. Farcically, the bomb is instead opened by over-eager Sun reporter Ricky Bloodworth, illegally sifting Garcia's mail for clues about the terrorists. Because of Bernal's poor construction, the bomb does not kill Bloodworth, it only injures him. Garcia never learns that the bomb was addressed to him, and the bombing is attributed to Wiley's gang.
The next evening, Wiley unleashes his new plan: buzzing the deck of the pre-Orange Bowl Friendship Cruise out at sea in a helicopter
Helicopter
A helicopter is a type of rotorcraft in which lift and thrust are supplied by one or more engine-driven rotors. This allows the helicopter to take off and land vertically, to hover, and to fly forwards, backwards, and laterally...
, Wiley promises to give the tourists on board some "real Florida souvenirs," and drops hundreds of shopping bags from posh vendors onto the deck - which, when ripped open by the frenzied tourists, contain live snakes. Chaos envelops the deck of the cruise ship, and one foolish passenger yells "abandon ship!" causing all of them to dive off into the ocean. As the Coast Guard
United States Coast Guard
The United States Coast Guard is a branch of the United States Armed Forces and one of the seven U.S. uniformed services. The Coast Guard is a maritime, military, multi-mission service unique among the military branches for having a maritime law enforcement mission and a federal regulatory agency...
is rescuing them, the helicopter flies away, but unexpectedly crashes at sea before it reaches land. No bodies are recovered.
Believing that Las Noches are dead, the Miami civil leaders breathe a sigh of relief. Keyes and Garcia remain skeptical, however, and insist that their security precautions remain in place until after the Orange Bowl Parade.
In a last-ditch attempt at redemption, Jesús Bernal kidnaps Garcia at gunpoint and drives him out to Key Largo
Key Largo
Key Largo is an island in the upper Florida Keys archipelago and, at long, the largest of the Keys. It is also the northernmost of the Florida Keys in Monroe County, and the northernmost of the Keys connected by U.S. Highway 1...
for a flashy execution. Garcia is wounded in the shoulder by Bernal's shotgun, but Keyes manages to track them down and kills Bernal with a pistol shot.
To Keyes's surprise, the Parade comes and goes without any sign of Wiley or his gang. The next day, Cab Mulcahy writes his own front-page account of the tourist murders, revealing his own knowledge of Wiley's role in the killings and apologizing to his readers for withholding it.
The evening after the Parade is the Orange Bowl game itself. In the stands, Keyes realizes, belatedly, that Kara Lynn is supposed to make a brief appearance during the game's halftime show. With all their security measures focused on the Parade, the game is a perfect opportunity for Las Noches, alive and well, to strike. In the chaos, Kara Lynn is kidnapped and carried out of the stadium on an airboat, though one of the gang, ex-football player "Viceroy" Wilson is shot to death by a Shriner friend of Theodore Bellamy, acting as Kara Lynn's unofficial escort.
With the police rushing around in confusion, Keyes goes directly to Jenna's house and examines Wiley's old press clippings. Quickly deducing where Wiley has gone, Keyes drags Jenna along with him.
Wiley has taken Kara Lynn to Osprey
Osprey
The Osprey , sometimes known as the sea hawk or fish eagle, is a diurnal, fish-eating bird of prey. It is a large raptor, reaching more than in length and across the wings...
Island, a small nature preserve in the middle of Biscayne Bay
Biscayne Bay
Biscayne Bay is a lagoon that is approximately 35 miles long and up to 8 miles wide located on the Atlantic coast of South Florida, United States. It is usually divided for purposes of discussion and analysis into three parts: North Bay, Central Bay, and South Bay. Its area is...
. When Kara Lynn recovers from her drugged sleep, Wiley is taken aback, and sorrowful, that she is, contrary to his expectations, an intelligent and unspoiled young woman. Regretfully he reveals his final plan: the surface of the island has been mined with dynamite
Dynamite
Dynamite is an explosive material based on nitroglycerin, initially using diatomaceous earth , or another absorbent substance such as powdered shells, clay, sawdust, or wood pulp. Dynamites using organic materials such as sawdust are less stable and such use has been generally discontinued...
, to be exploded at dawn, to allow for the construction of a snazzy new condominium
Condominium
A condominium, or condo, is the form of housing tenure and other real property where a specified part of a piece of real estate is individually owned while use of and access to common facilities in the piece such as hallways, heating system, elevators, exterior areas is executed under legal rights...
complex. Wiley plans to leave Kara Lynn there, with the island's other remaining wildlife, just to illustrate to the greedy developers of Florida the consequences of their rampant development - as he puts it, the birds, trees, and butterflies that inhabit the island have zero value to such people, but they might stop and think if their dynamite blows up the only species on earth they actually care about: "a future customer."
Before Wiley can go, however, Keyes arrives and disables Wiley with a bullet to the leg. The fisherman who dropped Keyes off refused to wait around, so Keyes demands to know where Wiley anchored his boat. At first, Wiley refuses to tell, prepared to let the dynamite claim himself, Keyes, and Kara Lynn all at once. But he is horrified to learn that Keyes has brought Jenna along, and surrenders the boat's location. To Keyes's surprise, he refuses to go along with them, preferring to stay on the island.
As they speed away from the island, Keyes, Kara Lynn, and Jenna look back and see an amazing spectacle: Wiley is climbing a tree (bad leg and all), trying feverishly to scare a bald eagle
Bald Eagle
The Bald Eagle is a bird of prey found in North America. It is the national bird and symbol of the United States of America. This sea eagle has two known sub-species and forms a species pair with the White-tailed Eagle...
nesting there into taking flight before the dynamite explodes. The novel ends just as the "all clear" signal for the detonation is sounded, with the three of them whispering the same prayer: "Please fly away."
Themes
The book is not only an example of the crime fictionCrime fiction
Crime fiction is the literary genre that fictionalizes crimes, their detection, criminals and their motives. It is usually distinguished from mainstream fiction and other genres such as science fiction or historical fiction, but boundaries can be, and indeed are, blurred...
genre, but a satire
Satire
Satire is primarily a literary genre or form, although in practice it can also be found in the graphic and performing arts. In satire, vices, follies, abuses, and shortcomings are held up to ridicule, ideally with the intent of shaming individuals, and society itself, into improvement...
as well, of many subjects from tourism to sports to race relations to the newsroom. It also contains examples of the literary
Literature
Literature is the art of written works, and is not bound to published sources...
device of the red herring
Red herring (plot device)
Red herring is an idiomatic expression referring to the rhetorical or literary tactic of diverting attention away from an item of significance...
; for example, deep background is given to characters who appear briefly only to die off, which keeps the reader guessing as to who will make it to the end of the book.
Hiaasen is a newspaper columnist from the Miami Herald. In an interview, he said that he took much of his inspiration from his work on the Herald. Readers may believe that Skip Wiley is a slightly more crazed version of the author; both are newspaper columnists, and both are very passionate and entertaining writers. One theme that persists in the book is moral ambiguity; while Brian Keyes understands the value of Skip Wiley's ends, Skip Wiley would have preferred a less violent means. Their conflict arises as a matter of where they place their allegiance: Brian Keyes to humankind, and Skip Wiley to the wild.
Hiaasen's novels typically deal with distinctly Floridian themes such as environmental destruction of unique ecosystems, the inability to sustain rapid growth, and crooked politicians, among others.
Main Characters
- Brian Keyes (32): a former reporter for the Sun, now a private detective.
- Cab Mulcahy: managing editor of the Sun, Keyes's friend and mentor.
- Ricky Bloodworth: wet-behind-the-ears reporter for the Sun. Energetic and ambitious, Bloodworth yearns for success in journalism, but lacks all the other qualities necessary for a good reporter, including sensitivity, tact, and basic writing skills.
- Al García: Detective Sergeant for the Metro-Dade Police Homicide unit.
Al Garcia
Alberto "Al" Garcia is a recurring fictional character in several novels by Carl HiaasenCarl Hiaasen
Carl Hiaasen is an American journalist, columnist and novelist.- Early years :Born in 1953 and raised in Plantation, Florida, of Norwegian heritage, Hiaasen was the first of four children and the son of a lawyer, Kermit Odel, and teacher, Patricia...
, beginning with Hiaasen's first, Tourist Season
Tourist Season
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.-Plot:...
. To date, he has appeared in four of Hiaasen's novels, and often acts as an important ally to the novel's main protagonist.
In the film version
Striptease (film)
-Release:Striptease was distributed by Sony and was finally released in the United States on June 28, 1996, after a June 23 premiere in New York City. It opened in Australia, France and Germany in August, and Argentina, Italy, Bolivia, South Africa, the United Kingdom, Brazil and Japan in...
of Strip Tease, he was portrayed by Armand Assante
Armand Assante
-Personal life:Assante was born in New York City and raised in Cornwall, New York, the son of Katherine , a music teacher and poet, and Armand Anthony Assante, Sr., a painter and artist. His father was Italian and his mother was Irish, and was raised in a devoutly Roman Catholic family...
.
Personal History
Garcia emigrated from Cuba
Cuba
The Republic of Cuba is an island nation in the Caribbean. The nation of Cuba consists of the main island of Cuba, the Isla de la Juventud, and several archipelagos. Havana is the largest city in Cuba and the country's capital. Santiago de Cuba is the second largest city...
as a young boy; certain family members stayed behind, including a sister who married a Cuban Army officer. Having arrived in America with virtually nothing, he joined the Metro-Dade County police and eventually became a detective in the Homicide
Homicide
Homicide refers to the act of a human killing another human. Murder, for example, is a type of homicide. It can also describe a person who has committed such an act, though this use is rare in modern English...
Division. His superiors look on him fondly as "an excellent detective with no ambition to be anything more."
In Tourist Season he investigates several suspicious deaths of tourists, but is initially censured when he suggests that an extremist group is targeting tourists. When the fact becomes impossible to ignore, he is put in charge of a special task force to catch the terrorists. One of the terrorists, Jesus Bernal, trying to raise his own prestige among anti-Castro
Fidel Castro
Fidel Alejandro Castro Ruz is a Cuban revolutionary and politician, having held the position of Prime Minister of Cuba from 1959 to 1976, and then President from 1976 to 2008. He also served as the First Secretary of the Communist Party of Cuba from the party's foundation in 1961 until 2011...
Cubans in Florida, labels Garcia a "traitor" and kidnaps him at gunpoint. Garcia receives a non-fatal wound to his shoulder from Bernal's shotgun (that continues to bother him in subsequent novels) before Bernal is stopped. He spends the book's climax recovering in the hospital.
Personal life
In Tourist Season he is married, with at least one adult daughter. At the time of Strip Tease, he has re-married, to a woman named Donna (whom he met while arresting her then-husband for a drug-related murder) and become stepfather to her two young children.
Books with Al Garcia
- Tourist SeasonTourist SeasonTourist Season is a 1986 novel by Carl Hiaasen. It was his first solo novel, after co-writing several mystery/thriller novels with William Montalbano.-Plot:...
- Double Whammy
- Skin TightSkin Tight (novel)Skin Tight is a novel by Carl Hiaasen. It focuses on a former detective for the Florida State Attorney's office, who becomes the target of a murder plot by a corrupt, and egregiously incompetent, plastic surgeon.-Plot summary:...
- Strip Tease
Victims
- Theodore Bellamy, shriner
- B.D. "Sparky" Harper, president of the Miami Chamber of Commerce
- Renee LeVoux, tourist from Montreal
- Ida Kimmelman, retiree
- Dr. Remond Courtenay, shill psychiatrist
Las Noches de Diciembre
- Skip Wiley (White, 37): A popular columnist for the Sun, leader and founder of Las Noches. Wiley wants to save the Florida environment by scaring tourists out of Florida. Wiley reasons that the entire Florida economy is dependent on tourism and emigration from other parts of America, and that without it the whole state structure will collapse.
- Daniel "Viceroy" Wilson (African-American, 36): formerly a star fullbackFullback (American football)A fullback is a position in the offensive backfield in American and Canadian football, and is one of the two running back positions along with the halfback...
for the Miami DolphinsMiami DolphinsThe Miami Dolphins are a Professional football team based in the Miami metropolitan area in Florida. The team is part of the Eastern Division of the American Football Conference in the National Football League...
football team, Wilson was cut from the team after critically injuring both knees. After several years as a drug addict and a petty criminal, he has cleaned up, educated himself, and dreams of revenge on the white-dominated establishment of Florida. - Jesús Bernal (Cuban, late 20's): formerly a member of an anti-CastroFidel CastroFidel Alejandro Castro Ruz is a Cuban revolutionary and politician, having held the position of Prime Minister of Cuba from 1959 to 1976, and then President from 1976 to 2008. He also served as the First Secretary of the Communist Party of Cuba from the party's foundation in 1961 until 2011...
group in Florida seeking to drive Castro from power and let Cuban exiles return home. Jesús was expelled from the movement after one mistake too many. Overflowing with machismoMachismoMachismo, or machoism, is a word of Spanish and Portuguese origin that describes prominently exhibited or excessive masculinity. As an attitude, machismo ranges from a personal sense of virility to a more extreme male chauvinism...
, he thinks of himself as the most experienced and well-trained of Las Noches at committing terrorist acts, but in fact is completely inept at anything except writing snappy press releases (a number of farcical situations in the novel arise from his attempts to plant homemade bombs). His militant politics are also something of a pose, since he was born and raised in New JerseyNew JerseyNew Jersey is a state in the Northeastern and Middle Atlantic regions of the United States. , its population was 8,791,894. It is bordered on the north and east by the state of New York, on the southeast and south by the Atlantic Ocean, on the west by Pennsylvania and on the southwest by Delaware...
, graduated from Dartmouth CollegeDartmouth CollegeDartmouth College is a private, Ivy League university in Hanover, New Hampshire, United States. The institution comprises a liberal arts college, Dartmouth Medical School, Thayer School of Engineering, and the Tuck School of Business, as well as 19 graduate programs in the arts and sciences...
, and has never been to Cuba in his life. - Tommy Tigertail (Seminole, mid-20's): A member of the Seminole Nation, and the source of Las Noches funding. Tommy is an innovator, largely responsible for turning white people's fetish for bingo into a multi-million dollar business for his tribe, and is also deeply aggrieved by the white men's actions against his ancestors, and their destruction of Florida's natural beauty.
- PavlovIvan PavlovIvan Petrovich Pavlov was a famous Russian physiologist. Although he made significant contributions to psychology, he was not in fact a psychologist himself but was a mathematician and actually had strong distaste for the field....
: a giant American crocodileAmerican CrocodileThe American crocodile is a species of crocodilian found in the Neotropics. It is the most widespread of the four extant species of crocodiles from the Americas. Populations occur from the Atlantic and Pacific coasts of southern Mexico to South America as far as Peru and Venezuela. It also lives...
. - Jenna: Skip's girlfriend, Brian's ex-girlfriend.
Cultural references
- Jimmy BuffettJimmy BuffettJames William "Jimmy" Buffett is a singer-songwriter, author, entrepreneur, and film producer. He is best known for his music, which often portrays an "island escapism" lifestyle. Together with his Coral Reefer Band, Buffett's musical hits include "Margaritaville" , and "Come Monday"...
, a friend of Hiaasen's, based a song on the novel, The Ballad of Skip Wiley. The song also incorporates Hiaasen's character of former Governor Clinton "Skink" TyreeClinton TyreeClinton Tyree, a.k.a. Skink, is a fictional character who has appeared in several novels by Carl Hiaasen, beginning with Double Whammy in 1987. He is an opponent of sprawl and development, and partakes of roadkill cuisine.-Personal history:...
, a later creation of Hiaasen.
Continuity with Hiaasen's Other Works
- Clinton TyreeClinton TyreeClinton Tyree, a.k.a. Skink, is a fictional character who has appeared in several novels by Carl Hiaasen, beginning with Double Whammy in 1987. He is an opponent of sprawl and development, and partakes of roadkill cuisine.-Personal history:...
, one of Hiaasen's few recurring characters, makes his debut in the subsequent novel, Double Whammy. Tyree shares much of Skip Wiley's passionate environmentalism and anger at corruption, though not his indiscriminate murderousness. - During the civic meeting to discuss Las Noches, one of the city leaders in attendance laments, half-jokingly, that he wishes they had targeted Disney World instead of Miami. In Hiaasen's subsequent novel Native TongueNative Tongue (Carl Hiaasen novel)Native Tongue is a novel by Carl Hiaasen, published in 1991. It is set in Florida, where a journalist, Joe Winder, investigates the disappearance of the last two rare "Blue Tongued Mango voles" from the "Amazing Kingdom of Thrills" in north Key Largo....
, the fictional "Amazing Kingdom" theme park carries heavy influence with South Florida politicians, largely because they blame Disney World for siphoning tourists' custom from South Florida to OrlandoOrlando, FloridaOrlando is a city in the central region of the U.S. state of Florida. It is the county seat of Orange County, and the center of the Greater Orlando metropolitan area. According to the 2010 US Census, the city had a population of 238,300, making Orlando the 79th largest city in the United States...
. - Several of Hiaasen's novels feature a recurring joke that radiologyRadiologyRadiology is a medical specialty that employs the use of imaging to both diagnose and treat disease visualized within the human body. Radiologists use an array of imaging technologies to diagnose or treat diseases...
is a "soft" medical discipline, and those that practice it are not "real" doctors. This novel features the first such joke: aboard the Orange Bowl cruise, a tourist couple introduce themselves as a doctor and his wife; a few minutes later, when his wife is bitten by a snake, the "doctor" does nothing, explaining that, "I'm just a radiologist!" - Tommy Tigertail, the only surviving member of Las Noches, reappears, peripherally, in Hiaasen's novel Nature GirlNature Girl (novel)-Plot introduction:Honey Santana becomes irritated by telemarketers and invites a particularly obnoxious one to a phony real estate promotion - which she describes as an eco-tour - in the Ten Thousand Islands in order to teach him a lesson...
. He is a prominent and influential elder of the Seminole tribe, and has recanted his more radical sentiments. He also tells his nephew Sammy, about Wiley, who Tommy believes was reincarnatedReincarnationReincarnation best describes the concept where the soul or spirit, after the death of the body, is believed to return to live in a new human body, or, in some traditions, either as a human being, animal or plant...
as a bald eagle. In an ironic scene, just such an eagle perches briefly over Boyd Shreave, the nature-hating antagonist of that novel, and defecates on his head. - Nature Girl is also the first novel in which Hiaasen returns to the topic of the Second Seminole WarSecond Seminole WarThe Second Seminole War, also known as the Florida War, was a conflict from 1835 to 1842 in Florida between various groups of Native Americans collectively known as Seminoles and the United States, part of a series of conflicts called the Seminole Wars...
, which Tommy dwells on several times in this novel.