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Car Hiaasen - Tourist Season

When the president of the Miami Chamber of Commerce is found dead inside a suitcase with his legs sawn off and a rubber alligator stuffed down his throat, news and police locals prefer to believe it's simply another typical South Florida crime. But when letters from a terrorist group, Las Noches de Diciembre, link the man's death to the disappearances of a visiting Shriner and a Canadian tourist, former newsman (now private eye) Brian Keyes intuits that someone is out to kill Florida's tourist trade. His investigation leads him to an old journalism crony obsessed with fury against the state's irresponsible development policies. Miami Herald columnist Hiaasen writes with a seriousness of intent and knack for characterization which, unfortunately, outstrip his comic talents. This is an auspicious solo debut for the serious Hiaasen (he has written three thrillers with William Montalbano), but a lukewarm one for him as a potential comic-absurdist.

Las Noches de Diciembre (The Nights of December) are a small terrorist cell led by renegade newspaper columnist Skip Wiley, a brilliant but crazed Uncle Duke-like character.

Wiley believes that the only way to save Florida's Everglades from developers is to dissuade tourists from visiting and settling in Florida. Their preferred weapon of dissuasion is random attacks on tourists, using a giant crocodile called Pavlov to murder them.

The novel pits private detective Brian Keyes against the Miami police force, Chamber of Commerce and other establishment figures, who desperately seek to put the lid on Wiley's antics so that tourists will continue to visit Florida.

Because of this, even murder is covered up by the cops, and this ratchets up the tension, causing Skip to promise wider and more terrible destruction - focusing on the public appearances of Florida's Orange Bowl Queen.

Now Brian Keyes, reporter turned private eye, must move from muckraking to rooting out murder, in a caper that mixes football players, politicians, and police with a group of fanatics and a very hungry crocodile.

The book is not only an example of the crime fiction 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.

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