Pineapple Grenade

December 19, 2011
Bestseller Dorsey dishes up his Miami mayhem with a side order of mordant wit in his 15th Serge Storms novel (after 2011’s When Elves Attack). This time, Serge dresses up in a homemade superhero costume (his stoner sidekick, Coleman, is the Human Torch) and designs unique ways to kill the miscreants who blight Florida, like vaporizing their internal organs with liquid nitrogen and a turkey baster. Serge’s other campaign—to get hired as a spy—turns dangerous when it sets two competing but equally corrupt CIA bureaus on his tail, while gunrunning, oil spills, political spin, and a touch of romance complicate the dizzying plot still further. The varied locations—Biscayne Bay’s “Stiltsville” houses, the Charles Deering estate, the airport from which Amelia Earhart’s final flight took off—are real but no less offbeat. Though the book’s formula will be familiar to series fans, neither Dorsey’s fast-paced prose nor his delight in skewering human foolishness has lost its mischievous sparkle. 8-city author tour. Agent: Nat Sobel, Sobel Weber.

February 1, 2012
Serge Storms (When Elves Attack, 2011, etc.) bumps it up a notch, joining a CIA operation so covert even the agency doesn't know about it. Convinced that he may be wasting his considerable talent for mayhem by confining himself to killing bad guys one at a time, Serge decides to go global. A day after their flight from Tampa somehow never gets off the ground, he and perma-buzzed pal Coleman drive to Miami and check into the Royal Poinciana, whose crumbling aqua trim appeals to Serge's sense of nostalgia. He gets himself a quick gig exporting cheap souvenirs to third-world countries. But he has his eyes on a bigger prize. He and Coleman visit the consulate of Costa Gorda and offer to spy on--well, whoever needs spying on. Security kicks them to the curb, convincing Serge that they've been hired. After a hasty visit to Mahoney, who's retired from an FBI career dedicated mainly to stalking Serge, the newly minted secret agents set off on a surveillance tour of pretty much anyone involved in the upcoming Meeting of the Americas Conference. (Serge does take time out to dispatch several carjackers in bizarre and painful ways, since someone has to keep the predators in check.) It isn't long before he attracts the attention of Lugar and Oxnart, rival CIA field supervisors, each of whom suspects that Serge is the other's secret weapon. Don't they realize that Serge belongs to no man, having dedicated himself wholly to Truth, Justice and Florida Trivia? Dorsey's 15th pits Serge against what may be the only folks as dysfunctional as he is: members of the international intelligence community.

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