TL;DR
Tim Dorsey’s first novel, a 1999 black comedy that introduced Serge A. Storms, a history-obsessed Florida killer with a moral code. Dorsey wrote it in secret while working nights at the Tampa Tribune.
In 1999 a night metro editor at the Tampa Tribune contacted a literary agent about a novel. The agent asked for a plot summary and the first chapter. Tim Dorsey sent the whole book.
Days later the agent called with a contract. Dorsey had told nobody at the paper he was writing.
He resigned one day after Florida Roadkill came out.
That story delights me every time.
What is Florida Roadkill about?
A cross-state chase full of corpses. It’s set in 1997, during the World Series the Florida Marlins won. It opens with three bodies in South Florida and then jumps back eleven months to explain how they got there.
At the center is Serge A. Storms, a sociopath who knows more Florida history than most professors and kills people he decides deserve it. His sidekick, Coleman, is permanently stoned. They team up with a dangerous stripper named Sharon. A $5 million insurance scheme and a suitcase of drug money set everyone chasing everyone else, from Tampa down through the Keys to the Dry Tortugas, with an insurance executive, a private investigator, bounty hunters and three bikers along for the ride.
William Morrow published it in August 1999. Serge is the reason it works. He’ll stop a getaway to lecture a hostage about a historical marker, and he takes his rules about who deserves to die as seriously as his rules about which roadside attractions matter. Dorsey makes him funny and frightening in the same paragraph, and he never lets the reader forget which of those comes first.
How was Florida Roadkill received?
Publishers Weekly called it manic and very entertaining and compared Dorsey to Elmore Leonard and Carl Hiaasen. It also noted that the cheap laughs and violence sometimes blunted the satire. Readers didn’t mind. The book started a series.
What came after Florida Roadkill?
Twenty-five more novels, roughly one a year, most of them starring Serge. Hammerhead Ranch Motel came next. Readers who want the story in order sometimes start with Triggerfish Twist. It takes place during this book’s timeline.
Dorsey spent the next two decades touring Florida’s libraries and bookstores, about a hundred stops a year. He died in 2023.
Why does Florida Roadkill belong on this shelf?
It’s a Tampa book by a Tampa writer, and it starts a series that couldn’t be set anywhere but Florida. Every detail about the state is researched like history. Readers who know Florida keep laughing in recognition.
It’s also a lesson in confidence. Most writing advice says to follow an agent’s instructions to the letter, and most of the time that advice is right. I still like the night editor who knew his book was finished and sent the whole manuscript.
Keep reading
Tim Dorsey, Florida novelist: the Tampa Tribune night editor who wrote 26 novels and toured Florida in a Cadillac.
