The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Zany, bloody world of ‘Florida Man’
Tim Dorsey’s books are built on that peculiarly Floridian brand of outrageousness that also spawned the viral figure of the title, Florida Man.
Dorsey’s fictional Florida man has been around since before viral was a thing, although Serge Storms differs in significant ways from those jokers who get famous for things like ill-advised interaction with alligators.
Serge is way smarter than the average Florida man, and he’s a walking encyclopedia of Florida history. Also, he kills people — but only if they’re asking for it.
Dorsey structures his plots around Serge’s road trips with his stoner pal, Coleman, and in “Naked Came the Florida Man” they’re visiting the burial sites of some of the state’s most notable residents. Many of them are literary. Others are pop culture figures, like Flipper. And some are unspeakably tragic, like those in the mass graves of the more than 2,000 victims of the 1928 hurricane that turned Lake Okeechobee into a wall of water.
The plot circles around the lake, which, Serge says, “I like to think of as Florida’s moon.” He, Coleman and their newly acquired emotional support ferret, Zippy, end up on its north side in the town of Okeechobee, where Serge finds a girlfriend and the whole gang attends a rodeo.
Along the way, Serge runs across some of those people whom he just can’t let live. Join a small-town church choir so you can hornswoggle elderly residents out of their homes? Get your little nephews to feed fizzing tummy medication to seagulls in the hope you can make a video of the birds exploding? Serge has plans for you, and those plans have bad, bad endings.
Meanwhile, some chapters swerve away from Serge to tell the story of Chris, a teenage girl in the football-crazy town of Pahokee on the lake’s southeast shore. Her only ambition in life is to play for her high school’s football team. In other chapters, a treasure hunter called Captain Crack Nasty poaches wrecked vessels, bullies children and worse.
All those plot lines will come together at the Muck Bowl, the annual football game between teams from two poverty-plagued towns that produce an astonishing number of pro players.
Serge will accomplish a heroic rescue, and he’ll tidy up a few other loose ends before he and Coleman hop in their gold Plymouth Satellite and speed out of town.