Wacky humour with a mean streak
(William Morrow, 368 pages) <$>
THE fun-loving, obsessive-compulsive psychopath named Serge Storms has become fixated on the destructive power of a “conga line of hurricanes” bearing down on Florida.Equipped with a stolen Hummer and some hurricane tracking gear ripped off from the National Hurricane Centre, Serge and his drug-addled sidekick Coleman are hell bent on cruising inside the peaceful eye of each of them as they cut their destructive paths across the Sunshine State.
But since Serge can never resist devising fiendishly clever ways to slaughter people who need killing, he’s bound to cause more havoc than any mere act ofd.
Hurricane Punch <$>is Tim Dorsey’s ninth novel, all of them featuring Serge. When we last encountered him in The Big Bamboo (2006), Serge was obsessed with reviving the movie business in his native Florida. But his obsessions never last long; in fact, some of them (Roman Catholicism, magic eight balls, becoming a newspaper columnist) burst upon him in a blaze of passion and vanish in minutes.
“You’ve got to understand,” Serge says in a rare moment of insight, “mental illness is like cholesterol. There’s the good kind and the bad. Without the good kind, less flavour to life. Van Gogh, Beethoven, Edgar Allan Poe, Sylvia Plath, Pink Floyd . . . utopian visions, zany nationalism that kills millions. Wait, that’s the bad kind.”
As he and Coleman joyously criss-cross the state with their beloved hurricanes, the bodies of people who need killing start to pile up. Refuse a polite request to turn your car stereo down? Serge builds a huge amplifier, seals you inside and lets the powerful sound waves burst your blood vessels. If you want to know the ironic ends he devises for a profiteer taking advantage of hurricane victims, and for a you’ve-been-punked-style reality TV prankster, read the book.
As the plot unfolds, a serial killer, jealous of the publicity Serge’s rampage is getting, ramps up his own murder spree. Both killers start sending duelling letters to the press. News organisations battle for serial killer scoops.
And, along the way, Dorsey manages to satirise hurricane chasers, psychiatry, Tom Cruise, the music business, the Terry Schiavo case, newspapers, television meteorologists, serial killers, serial killer profilers, Matt Lauer, drug use, civil defence, religion, atheism and the noir genre itself — all just a few of his targets.
Actually, “satirises” may be too gentle a word for the rapid-fire derision that drips from every page.
Dorsey’s slapstick noir novels are not for everyone, but if you like wacky humour with a mean streak — nk Saw meets the Three Stooges. You’ll be in hysterics.
