Florida Man

Starred review from May 4, 2020
Beach bums, wack jobs, and refugees populate Cooper’s Technicolor vision of 1980s Florida in this darkly entertaining tale (after The Marauders) set on fictional Emerald Island on the Gulf Coast. Reed Crowe has a secret, but no idea how dangerous it will prove. Two decades earlier, at 17, Reed and his soon-to-be wife, Heidi, witnessed a plane crash and found a shipment of marijuana in the burning wreckage. “This is going to change our life,” Reed says. Now, proprietor of a cheesy tourist attraction called the Florida Man Mystery House and owner of the seedy Emerald Island Inn (acquired thanks to his sudden windfall from the drugs), Reed is middle-aged, often stoned or drunk, and melancholy. Reed and Heidi’s marriage has unraveled, partly because of the murky circumstances around their daughter’s death, and partly because he wanted to stay put, while she insisted on leaving for New York City to advance her art career. Wayne Wade, Crowe’s degenerate, drug-peddling childhood friend and “de facto factotum,” works at the motel, but not much, and runs his mouth at local watering hole the Rum Jungle, where Henry Yahchilane, a Seminole Vietnam vet, overhears something from Wayne about a human skull sighting on a Florida Man swamp tour. After a series of violent, misunderstood encounters, Crowe and Yahchilane team up against crack-addicted Cuban refugee and assassin Hector “Catface” Morales, who seeks revenge on Crowe for stealing his drugs years earlier. As Crowe manages to avoid death by snake, sinkhole, stabbing, explosion, Jet Ski, and heartbreak, he begins to know himself better, along with those around him. Throughout, Cooper’s macabre and brutal universe crackles with energy and wit, and will hold readers’ attention until the very end. Cooper’s riotous, riveting tale rivals the best of Don Winslow.

Starred review from May 15, 2020
A beach bum who's a magnet for bad juju struggles to maintain his hard-knock life and idle pleasures amid the heat-seeking trouble headed his way. Gulf Coast native Cooper made a memorable debut with The Marauders (2015). This second act delivers an even messier, nastier, more brutal, and engaging yarn that spans decades on a remote outpost deep in the wilds of Florida. Most crime novels zero in on a single target: a murder, a heist, or just regular bloody revenge. In this fascinating decadeslong trek, we follow perpetually stoned Reed Crowe and his nearly endless run of bad luck. Our titular loser is stuck, both psychically and physically, on Emerald Island, one of those fabled tourist traps from the 1950s, where Reed, circa 1980, manages a run-down motel and a pathetic amusement park, The Florida Man Mystery House. There's an ex-wife, an internationally known artist named Heidi, as well as the memory of their dead little girl, Lily, which haunts him daily. As in many small towns, the denizens of Emerald Island live in a state of perpetual, tentative d�tente that threatens to erupt into violence at any moment. Among them are Wayne Wade, Reed's pervy, drug-addled buddy; a kid named Eddie Maldonado who insists on helping with Reed's various schemes; and most importantly, Henry Yahchilane, a quiet but dangerous loner who marks Reed as a threat to one of his most closely held secrets. Things get way out of hand when a villain named Hector "Catface" Morales, a Mariel boatlift veteran and sadistic assassin long thought dead, resurfaces with a plan to punish Reed for a dope deal gone wrong years ago. Add a few biblical hurricanes, the occasional sea monster, and Jimmy Buffet and stir. This cocktail's recipe would be one part Travis McGee, one part Carl Hiaasen, and a salt shaker full of magical realism.

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August 1, 2020
As a teen in the late 1960s, Reed Crowe witnessed a small plane crash near Emerald Island, Florida. He thought there were no survivors, and grabbed a bundle of marijuana floating in the water. Almost 20 years later, Crowe owns the roadside attraction Florida Man Mystery House, and the rundown Emerald Island Inn, and he was wrong, there was a survivor, and he is now hell-bent on revenge. As Cooper's (The Marauders, 2015) thoughtfully crafted, wildly overblown, fully engaging tale progresses, the gritty and graphic violence that comes from dirty deals and drug crimes is balanced with small details that connect all the story lines and portrayals of diverse characters who reveal imperfections that make them truly human. Cooper also addresses how Florida was settled and how tourism had come to define its culture. With a strong setting in time and place, dark humor, and tension between themes worthy of contemplation and hard-hitting action, Cooper's high-energy tale of mayhem will appeal to fans of Quentin Tarantino, Carl Hiaasen, or Tim Dorsey.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2020, American Library Association.)