If You Like: Carl Hiaasen
PRPL Titles
Legally Dead by
A Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter and author of the thriller Love Kills launches a new series featuring former U.S. Marshall Michael Venturi, who quits the Witness Protection Program to become a one-man freelance identity wizard.
Call Number: MYS BUCISBN: 9780743294775Publication Date: 2008-08-12
The Godfather of Kathmandu by
Sonchai Jitpleecheep-- John Burdett's inimitable Royal Thai Police detective with the hard-bitten demeanor and the Buddhist soul-- is summoned to the most shocking and intriguing crime scene of his career. Solving the murder could mean a promotion, but Sonchai, reeling from a personal tragedy, is more interested in Tietsin, an exiled Tibetan lama based in Kathmandu who has become his guru. There are, however, obstacles in Sonchai's path to nirvana. Police Colonel Vikorn has just named Sonchai his consigliere (he's been studying The Godfather on DVD): to troubleshoot, babysit, defuse, procure, reconnoiter-- do whatever needs to be done in Vikorn's ongoing battle with Army General Zinna for control of Bangkok's network of illegal enterprises. And though Tietsin is enlightened and (eerily) charismatic, he also has forty million dollars' worth of heroin for sale. If Sonchai truly wants to be an initiate into Tietsin's "apocalyptic Buddhism," he has to pull off a deal that will bring Vikorn and Zinna to the same side of the table. Further complicating the challenge is Tara: a Tantric practitioner who captivates Sonchai with her remarkable otherworldly techniques. Here is Sonchai put to the extreme test--as a cop, as a Buddhist, as an impossibly earthbound man--in John Burdett's most wildly inventive, darkly comic, and wickedly entertaining novel yet.
Call Number: BUTISBN: 9780307263193Publication Date: 2010-01-12
Bone Island Mambo by
A pleasant Key West Sunday in January turns into a tropical nightmare.It's early. The tourists are still asleep. Freelance and part-time crime photographer Alex Rutledge bicycles near-vacant streets, taking pictures for his own enjoyment. But he's challenged at a restoration district construction site, accused by a developer of snapping photos for an expose.An hour later, the city police request Rutledge's forensic photo expertise. A murder victim has been found - at the same work site. Detective Dexter Hayes, Jr., is caustic and inept, and Rutledge is dismissed before he completes his work. An hour later, the county sheriff, Chicken Neck Liska, asks Alex to photograph another murder victim, this time on nearby Stock Island.Rutledge soon suspects that the murders are linked - illogically, through him. He can't divulge the link to his lover, Teresa Barga, for fear of compromising her police media liaison job. Alex questions the detective's blundering, while the cops begin to link him to the crimes. A powerful real estate broker offers Rutledge an odd, lucrative job. Friends are threatened. He and Teresa dodge gunshots. Yet there is no identifiable antagonist, no motive, no reason for Rutledge to be a hub for evil. To protect himself and his friends, to avoid arrest - unsuccessfully, at first - he must scratch for information on an island where few tell the truth.At the core of Bone Island Mambo is betrayal, retribution, and revenge. The plot twists in surprising directions, and Corcoran's characters are true characters, never as laid-back as they first appear. Visit Key West, and hang on for dear life.
Call Number: MYS CORISBN: 9780312242817Publication Date: 2001-05-22
Florida Roadkill by
The rabid fans of Florida Roadkill have been clamoring for answers: What happened to the hyperactive spree killer and fanatical Florida folklorist Serge A. Stormes and that $5 million in laundered drug cash? Now they can check into the sleazy Hammerhead Ranch Motel to find out. One of the last old beach motels in the path of an advancing column of glistening new condominiums marching up the Gulf Coast shoreline, Hammerhead Ranch has a budget price and charming deterioration that make it a magnet for colorful clientele with seedy baggage. It's here where all the players ultimately converge -- along with the elusive (some say cursed) Haliburton with the $5 million -- for a final showdown during a killer hurricane. Add a dancing television weather dog, a shotgun-totin' grandma, two sex-and-drug-crazed coeds on the lam, a crew of storm-jumpers straight out of Airplane, and assorted other Floridian flotsam and the result is Dorsey's next great blockbuster.
Call Number: DORISBN: 0688167829Publication Date: 1999-08-01
Metro Girl by
Alexandra (Barney) Barnaby roars onto the Miami Beach scene in hot pursuit of her missing baby brother, "Wild" Bill. Leave it to the maverick of the family to get Barney involved with high-speed car chases, a search for sunken treasure, and Sam Hooker, a NASCAR driver who’s good at revving a woman's engine. Engaged in a deadly race, Bill has "borrowed" Hooker's sixty-five-foot Hatteras and sailed off into the sunset...just when Hooker has plans for the boat. Hooker figures he'll attach himself to Barney and maybe run into scumbag Bill. And better yet, maybe he'll get lucky in love with Bill's sweetie pie sister. The pedal will have to go to metal if Barney and Hooker want to be the first to cross the finish line, save Bill, Hooker's boat...and maybe the world.
Call Number: EVAISBN: 0060584025Publication Date: 2005-09-27
Magic City by
A novel based on real events and newly declassified documents, "Magic City" is to Miami what "L.A. Confidential" and "Chinatown" were to Los Angeles. It evokes a time in our nation's history when powerful men were willing to do whatever they thought necessary to achieve their goals. A simple black and white photograph taken during the 1964 Cassius Clay-Sonny Liston fight on Miami Beach may hold the key to a horrific, politically-motivated crime forty-two years earlier. After it suddenly appears on display at a trendy Miami gallery opening, the photograph is burned in an act of arson that sets off a modern-day murder spree, reaching from the quiet neighborhoods of Miami to the back corridors of the White House. What the killer didn't know is that there is one remaining copy. When it falls into Thorn's hands, he and everyone he loves become the target of madmen and trained killers, each of whom has his own powerful motive to see the photograph destroyed forever and its mysteries kept hidden. To find retribution for the death of a loved one, Thorn joins forces with a dangerous enemy to solve a maddening puzzle. At its center are two families from very different worlds with their own dark secrets. Unraveling this dangerous riddle shakes the foundation of his bond with both Alexandra and his closest friend, and sends him on a deadly journey. But cover-ups have a way of disintegrating over time, especially when someone like Thorn is pounding on the door. "Magic City "is an epic crime thriller--exposing the past of a city in a time capsule of a novel.
Call Number: HALISBN: 9780312271794Publication Date: 2007-03-06
Whiskey Sour by
Lieutenant Jacqueline Jack' Daniels is having a bad week. Her live-in boyfriend has left her for his personal trainer, chronic insomnia has caused her to max out her credit cards with late-night home shopping purchases and a frightening killer who calls himself 'The Gingerbread Man' is dumping mutilated bodies in her district. Whiskey Sour is full of laugh-out-loud humour and edge-of-your-seat suspense and it also introduces a fun, fully drawn heroine in the grand tradition of Kinsey Millhone, Stephanie Plum and Kay Scarpetta.'
Call Number: MYS KONISBN: 9781401300876Publication Date: 2004-06-02
Maximum Bob by
A character so outrageous he could only have come from the ingenious imagination of Elmore Leonard, lewd, lecherous, law-bending Florida jurist Judge Robert “Maximum Bob” Gibbs has been judged guilty by a grudge-bearing malefactor and sentenced to death—by alligator, if necessary. Maximum Bob is a delightfully dark classic thriller from “the greatest crime writer of our time, perhaps ever” (New York Times Book Review), and any reader who loved getting gleefully lost in criminal mayhem of Get Shorty, Rum Punch, Out of Sight, The Hot Kid, or any number of the inimitable Leonard’s numerous crime fiction masterworks will get maximum enjoyment out of this one.
Call Number: LEOISBN: 9780062009401Publication Date: 1991
Djibouti by
The incomparable Elmore Leonard is back with Djibouti, a gripping, twisting, playful, and always surprising tale of modern-day piracy. Djibouti sparkles with the trademark Leonard style, wit, and crackling dialogue that have made novels like Get Shorty, Out of Sight, and The Hot Kid crime fiction classics. This time Elmore's taking us to the Horn of Africa for an unforgettable confrontation with con men, crooked diplomats, documentary filmmakers, and pirates...and it's going to be a wild ride!
Call Number: LEOISBN: 9780061735172Publication Date: 2010-10-12
The Deep Blue Good-By by
When a complete stranger informs Cathy Kerr that he knows the whereabouts of her imprisoned father's fortune, Travis McGee enters the picture.
Call Number: MYS MACISBN: 9780449223833Publication Date: 1995-05-31
Buck Fever by
Blanco County, Texas: It's the week before deer hunting season, as close to a statewide holiday you get in Texas, and the locals are getting restless. Red O'Brien and Billy Don Craddock aren't the only good ol' boys out at night spotlighting deer from their pickups, trying to get a jump on the hundreds of hunters that will be out come Saturday. Game Warden John Marlin has his hands full with poaching complaints coming in faster than he can write out-of-season tickets. Then a call of a different sort comes in. A man dressed up in some sort of deer costume has been shot at the Circle S ranch, and witnesses are reporting a massive wild-eyed buck deer prancing about the pasture in a lovesick frenzy. Marlin's seen a lot in his years, but this is wilder than he could have imagined: the man in the deer suit is a good friend, and the whacked-out whitetail isn't exactly a stranger either. It's the beginning of a mad, frantic weekend in Blanco County, one that will see a few more men shot, an invasion by Colombians with more than hunting on their minds, and damn near the end of Marlin's life. Newcomer Ben Rehder serves it all up with a huge helping of humor in this comic mystery that will firmly establish him as the funniest crime writer in Texas.
Call Number: MYS REHISBN: 0312291140Publication Date: 2002-09-04
Bone Key by
Reviewers nationwide have joined such writers as Elmore Leonard, Tony Hillerman, and Stephen King in praising Standiford's John Deal novels-but his new Deal may be the best one yet. On a trip to Key West to talk with a wealthy developer about a new building project, Deal stops to help a young black man who is being rousted by police on a lonely beach road. The young man is appreciative-which makes it all the more shocking two days later, when he turns up dead. What happened? The police won't say. The locals won't talk. An old girlfriend appears, but Deal can't tell if she's there to help or hinder him. References keep being made to a seventy-year-old tale of piracy and murder as if it should mean something to him. All Deal knows for sure is that the more he looks into it all, the more layers he finds, and the more people seem to have died. And that, unless he can get to the bottom of it soon, the next death just might be his own. Filled with intense, character-driven action and rich, textured prose, Bone Keyproves again why "Standiford's stories are some of the best suspense novels out there" (Rocky Mountain News).
Call Number: MYS STAISBN: 9780399148743Publication Date: 2002-04-15
Chasing Midnight by
It began peacefully enough, on one of Florida's private islands. At a reception hosted by a notorious Russian black marketeer, Doc Ford uses darkness, and his friend Tomlinson, as cover to get an underwater look at the billionaire's yacht. By the time Ford surfaces, everything has changed. Environmental extremists have taken control of the island. Or are they thugs hired by the Russian's competitors? Whatever the motive, they have herded everyone together and threatened to kill one hostage every hour until midnight unless their demands are met-at which point they will just blow everybody up. Electronic jammers make communications with the outside world impossible. The only hope of avoiding terrible consequences: The militants do not know Ford's capabilities, or that he is still on the loose. But that situation won't last for long . . . and the clock is ticking.
Call Number: WHIISBN: 9780399158315Publication Date: 2012-03-06
The Heat Islands by
In Randy Wayne White's The Heat Islands, marine biologist and former secret operative Doc Ford is lazily poling his skiff along Southwest Florida's flat copper sea in search of sea anemones, when he runs into the body of the most hated man on Sanibel Island-Marvin Rios. And when the Island's simplest and sweetest resident is arrested for the murder Doc heads straight into the heart of the sunshine state's dark side-to save his friend from being framed, and to save Sanibel Island from a rising tide of land-grab schemes, blood money and violence.
Call Number: MYS WHIISBN: 9780312929770Publication Date: 1992
Other RCLS Titles
You may request these additional titles through inter-library loan.
The Monkey Wrench Gang by
"And just what the hell are they planning next?" The bridge, bedecked with bunting, steamers and Day-Glo banners, was ready. the throng prepared to unloose a cheer or two. Suddenly the center of the bridge rose up and broke in two along a jagged zigzag line. A sheet of read flame streamed skyward... "This is their last stunt, Governor. We're on their tail, sir. We have a good idea who they are, how they poerate, and what they're planning next."
ISBN: 038000741XPublication Date: 1976-11-01
Big Trouble by
The humorist offers a fiction debut that describes the lives of the troubled denizens of Coconut Grove, including a career-threatened adman, an alcoholic embezzler dodging a couple of hit men, and their dysfunctional families.
ISBN: 9780399145674Publication Date: 1999-09-13
Tricky Business by
The Extravaganza of the Seasis a five-thousand-ton cash cow, a top-heavy tub whose sole function is to carry gamblers three miles from the Florida coast, take their money, then bring them back so they can find more money. In the middle of a tropical storm one night, these characters are among the passengers it carries: Fay Benton, a single mom and cocktail waitress desperate for something to go right for once; Johnny and the Contusions, a ship's band with so little talent they are . . . well, the ship's band; Arnold and Phil, two refugees from the Beaux Arts Senior Center; Lou Tarant, a wide, bald man who has killed nine people, though none recently; and an assortment of uglies whose job it is to facilitate the ship's true business, which is money-laundering or drug-smuggling or . . . something. What happens to them all in the midst of the fiercest storm in years, the unpredictable ways in which this trip will change their lives and send them ricocheting off each other like a giant game of pinball, is the story of this astonishing, wickedly satisfying, all-too-human novel by "one of the funniest writers alive" (Carl Hiaasen).
ISBN: 0399149244Publication Date: 2002-09-30
A Salty Piece of Land by
The beloved traveler/troubadour offers up a plate of stories from his world of seaplanes, tropical isles, and wayward adventures. A Salty Piece of Land takes readers to a warm beach and introduces some of the wildest characters ever to dip their toes in the ocean. This irresistible collection will be the next in an impressive line of bestsellers for the inimitable Jimmy Buffett.
ISBN: 0316908452Publication Date: 2004-11-30
Atomic Lobster by
Why is everyone rushing to flee Tampa on a cruise ship to hell? Serge is back with a bullet, torn between homicide and souvenirs. So is Coleman, torn between getting hammered and getting more hammered. Then there's good ol' Jim Davenport, the E-Team, the Diaz Brothers, and Johnny Vegas, the Accidental Virgin, cranking up the fevered action as the pot boils over on a street called Lobster Lane. It's reunion time in the Sunshine State, and we're not just talking the family jamboree of that blood-soaked criminal clan, the McGraws, whose nastiest, meanest member is finally released from prison and heads south bent on revenge. On top of it all, the government is covering up a growing list of mysterious victims across Florida who may or may not be connected to a nefarious plot being hatched against national security. But wait! There's more on the horizon! Who is the oddly familiar femme fatale named Rachael? Is Serge wrong that guns, drugs, and strippers don't mix? What sets the Non-Confrontationalists off on a rampage? What finally brings Coleman and Lenny together? Will they succeed in building the biggest bong ever? And can Serge surf a rogue wave to victory? So batten the hatches, don the life jackets, and take cover as all these questions and more are answered in the latest adventure from the acclaimed author of Hurricane Punch.
ISBN: 9780060829698Publication Date: 2008-01-22
Rolling Thunder by
There's more fireworks down the Jersey shore in Chris Grabenstein's sixth fast-paced John Ceepak mystery Rolling Thunder. A prominent citizen suffers a heart attack on opening day of a brand new boardwalk roller coaster in the seedy seaside resort town Sea Haven, New Jersey. Initially ruled a tragic accident, it isn't long before there are suspicious hints of foul play--especially after another dead body is discovered: a stunning young beach beauty.Fortunately for mystery lovers, the straight-arrow cop John Ceepak and his wise-cracking young partner Danny Boyle are on the case, a detective/sidekick duo critics have compared to Rex Stout's Nero Wolfe and Archie Goodwin.
ISBN: 9781605980898Publication Date: 2010-05-18
Fuzzy Navel by
Life's pretty good for Lieutenant Daniels. She's solved some of the city's toughest - and most high profile - homicides. Her fiance, Latham, is on the mend from an almost deadly case of botulism. She's just learnt that Alex Kork, one of the sickest, most dangerous criminals Jack ever put away, has killed herself. But things quickly take a turn for the worse when a group of vigilantes on a murderous spree takes down a cop. Then things turn downright ugly when Jack learns that Alex may not have killed herself after all...
ISBN: 9781401302801Publication Date: 2008-07-08
The Floating Girl by
The Suspicious Disappearance of a young artist followed by a bizarre death leads Rei Shimura into the heart of Japan's youth underground -- and possibly closer to her own doom.
ISBN: 0060192291Publication Date: 2000-05-01
Guilt Trip by
Blanco County, Texas, game warden John Marlin has his peaceful life turned upside down by the disappearance of the womanizing treasurer of the local Rotary Club, the explosion of a drug house down the road, the theft of an exotic car, and murder.
ISBN: 0312321333Publication Date: 2005-09-01
Welcome to Paradise by
Laurence Shames, whom theChicago Tribunecalls "one of our best crime fiction writers," is back. This time he brings us a hilarious novel of mistaken identity and tropical crime that proves that while we all love the idea of a vacation, the truth is we often end up wishing we'd stayed home.          For Alan Tuschman--mild-mannered furniture salesman from New Jersey, a man without an enemy--a vacation in Key West turns out to be not paradise but a hell of bizarre assaults on him, his property, and his sanity. Why? It might have something to do with the nickname emblazoned on his license plate.          For Big Al Marracotta--Mafia capo and boss of New York's Fulton Fish Market--vacation is the time when a long career of crime and rancid sea-food finally threatens to catch up with him.          And for lissome Katy Sansone, who is seeking no more than some sunshine and a little self-respect, Key West serves up a bafflement of Als, and way more danger than she'd packed for.          Rich in the loopy insights and surprising tenderness that have become Shames's hallmarks,Welcome to Paradiseis his best novel yet.
ISBN: 0375502521Publication Date: 1999-04-27
Subject Guide
New Titles
The Don Con by
The Mafia comes to Comic-Con in this fast-paced suspense caper and outrageous pop culture satire. Joey Volpe hit the high watermark of his acting career when he played a small role as a mobster on The Sopranos. If you blinked, you missed it. But now he's unemployed, broke, and forced to make a living by signing autographs at pop-culture fan conventions, or "Fan-Cons," for $35 a pop. His lack of income, along with his chronic womanizing, has put his marriage at risk, too. But Joey's life gets even worse when real mobster Tony Rosetti shows up in the autograph line with a plan to rob the next Fan-Con--an offer Joey can't refuse. When the heist goes awry, Joey has a beef with Rosetti and two long years to plan. Partnered with a smooth-talking con man, Joey is using all his acting skills on new projects: Revenge. Money. And saving his marriage.
Call Number: ARMISBN: 9781610353366Publication Date: 2019-04-01
The Bouncer by
In David Gordon's diabolically imaginative new thriller,The Bouncer, nothing and no one is as expected--from a vial of yellow fragrance to a gangster who moonlights in women's clothes. Joe Brody is just your average Dostoevsky-reading, Harvard-expelled strip club bouncer who has a highly classified military history and whose best friend from Catholic school happens to be head mafioso Gio Caprisi. FBI agent Donna Zamora, the best shot in her class at Quantico, is a single mother stuck at a desk manning the hotline. Their storylines intersect over a tip from a cokehead that leads to a crackdown on Gio's strip joint in Queens and Joe's arrest--just one piece of a city-wide sweep aimed at flushing out anyone who might have a lead on the various terrorists whose photos are hanging on the wall under Most Wanted. Outside the jailhouse, the Fed and the bouncer lock eyes, as Gordon launches them both headlong into a nonstop plot that goes from back-road gun show intervention to high-stakes perfume heist and manages to touch everyone from the CIA to the Flushing Triads. Beneath it all lurks a sinister criminal mastermind whose manipulations could cause chaos on a massively violent scale. For readers who like a heavy dose of fun with their murder, this is crime fiction at its freshest, from a virtuoso of the "darkly comic, stylish literary thriller" (Associated Press).
Call Number: GORISBN: 9780802128003Publication Date: 2018-08-07
Big Guns by
From Steve Israel, the congressman-turned-novelist who writes "in the full-tilt style of Carl Hiaasen" (The Washington Post), comes a comic tale about the mighty firearm industry, a small Long Island town, and Washington politics. When Chicago's Mayor Michael Rodriguez starts a national campaign to ban handguns from America's cities, towns, and villages, Otis Cogsworth, the wealthy chairman and CEO of Cogsworth International Arms worries about the effects on his company. In response he and lobbyist Sunny McCarthy convince an Arkansas congressman to introduce federal legislation mandating that every American must own a firearm. Events soon escalate. Asabogue's Mayor Lois Leibowitz passes an ordinance to ban guns in the town--right in Otis Cogsworth's backyard. Otis retaliates by orchestrating a recall election against Lois and Jack Steele, a rich town resident, runs against her. Even though the election is for the mayor of a village on Long Island, Steele brings in the big guns of American politics to defeat Lois: political consultants, Super PACs, and celebrities. Soon, thousands of pro-gun and anti-gun partisans descend on Asabogue, along with an assortment of heavily armed rightwing militias and the national news media. Bucolic Asabogue becomes a tinderbox. Meanwhile, Washington politicians in both parties are caught between a mighty gun lobby whose support they need for reelection and the absurdity of requiring that every American with waivers for children under age four carry a gun. What ensues is a discomfiting, hilarious indictment of the state of American politics. Former Long Island Congressman, Steve Israel has firsthand knowledge of the cynicism and corruption at the heart of our political system. Big Guns will make you laugh, will make you angry, and will make you think as you flip the pages faster and faster to find out what happens next.
Call Number: ISRISBN: 9781501118029Publication Date: 2018-04-17
Authors to Try (perhaps start with these*)
Edward Abbey
Dave Barry [Fiction]
Thomas Briody
Edna Buchanan
John Burdett
Harry Crews
Tim Dorsey*
Ben Elton
Janet Evanovich
Robert Ferrigno
Bill Fitzhugh
Kinky Friedman
Chris Grabenstein
James W. Hall
Pete Hautman
Nick Hornby
John Katzenbach
Joe Konrath
Marc Lecard
Elmore Leonard*
John Leslie
Paul Levine
David Lodge
Sujata Massey
Christopher Moore
Ben Rehder
Tom Robbins
Tim Sandlin
Laurence Shames*
Johnny Shaw
Ray Shannon
B.J. Smith
Les Standiford
Charlie Stella
Peter Tasker
Timothy Watts
Donald Westlake
Randy Wayne White
Sources
If You Like Carl Hiaasen...Ames Public Library
If You Like Carl Hiaasen...Oshkkosh Public Library