Tourist Season
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Tourist Season is a novel written in 1986 by Carl Hiaasen. It is set in and around Miami, Florida.
Bookjacket tagline
The only trace of the first victim was his Shriner's fez washed up on the Miami beach. The second victim was found dead with a toy alligator lodged in his throat. And that was just the beginning ...
Plot synopsis
Las Noches de Diciembre (The Nights of December) are a small terrorist cell led by renegade tabloid journalist Skip Wiley, a 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 a giant crocodile called Pavlov. But their threats are not taken seriously, even after the third murder of a tourist, and so Skip begins to promise a 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.
Hiaasen's novels typical deal with distinctly Floridian themes such as environmental destruction of unique ecosystems, the inability to sustain rapid growth, and crooked politicians, among others.