Naked Came the Florida Man: A Novel

Written by Tim Dorsey

Narrated by Oliver Wyman

The ""compulsively irreverent and shockingly funny"" (Boston Globe) Tim Dorsey returns with an insanely entertaining tale in which the inimitable Serge A. Storms sees dead people and investigates a creepy urban myth that may be all too real.

Though another devastating hurricane is raking Florida, its awesome power can’t stop the Sunshine State’s most loyal son, Serge A. Storms, from his latest scenic road trip: a cemetery tour. With his best bro Colman riding shotgun, Serge hits the highway in his ’69 gold Plymouth Satellite, putting pedal to the metal on a grand tour of the past. Beginning in Key West, the sunshine boys’ odyssey includes a forgotten mass grave in Palm Beach county holding the remains of African Americans killed by the Great Hurricane of 1928, and the resting place of one world-famous television dolphin (RIP Flipper) from the 1960s.

But one deadland—a haunted old sugar field—holds more than just the bones of those who’ve passed. For years, local children have whispered about a boogeyman hiding among the stalks. Could it be the same maniac known as Naked Florida man who’s been raising hell all over the place?

There are few things Serge loves more than solving a good mystery and bestowing justice on miscreants who sully his beloved home’s good name. With his partner bong boy, Florida’s psycho superhero will find the truth in this hilariously violent delight—packed with history, lore, and plenty of motel antics—from the insanely ingenious Tim Dorsey.

• Language: English
• Publisher: HarperAudio
• Release date: Jan 7, 2020
• ISBN: 9780062795977

Tim Dorsey

Tim Dorsey was a reporter and editor for the Tampa Tribune from 1987 to 1999, and is the author of twenty-five other novels: Mermaid Confidential, Tropic of Stupid, Naked Came the Florida Man, No Sunscreen for the Dead, Pope of Palm Beach, Clownfish Blues, Coconut Cowboy, Shark Skin Suite, Tiger Shrimp Tango, The Riptide Ultra-Glide, When Elves Attack, Pineapple Grenade, Electric Barracuda, Gator A-Go-Go, Nuclear Jellyfish, Atomic Lobster, Hurricane Punch, The Big Bamboo, Torpedo Juice, Cadillac Beach, The Stingray Shuffle, Triggerfish Twist, Orange Crush, Hammerhead Ranch Motel, and Florida Roadkill. He lives in Florida.

Reviews for Naked Came the Florida Man

[zmagic69 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

After the last book I read I needed something light.
Books don’t get much lighter, than a Tim Dorsey book.
Look you don’t read these books to become enlightened , but there is excellent history about Florida throughout the book, and a couple of people who deserve to have bad things happen to them in remarkably crazy and unique ways, well as usual the book has these too.

[hagelstein_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Serge Storms, the hyper Floridaphile, takes a cemetery tour of the state in a muscle car, which starts with he and his stoner bud Coleman riding out a hurricane in the Keys. For the tour he adopts the persona of Captain Florida, not to be confused with the Florida Man phenomenon, which Serge has a few choice words about.Of course he engages in his usual creative extermination of people that need to be exterminated. The usual coffee-induced Serge madness is interspersed with witty social commentary: “Technology outpaced our evolution,” said Serge. “All of humanity falls along a spectrum of love to hate, and the people bunched up on the shitty end are now defined by too much spare time and keyboards.” Serge analyzes Golden Corral chocolate fountains as socio-economic markers, reveals himself as an aficionado of economy motel room art and engages in finger painting and kindergarten level craft activities with Coleman. He also addresses the hate groups that were picketing veteran’s funerals and real estate scammers, hence a couple of the exterminations.

[garry castelli · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Another Tim Dorsey classic Serge at his best couldn’t stop listening

[dawn white · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

I have read every Tim Dorsy Serge Storm books except his latest one. I’ll be reading that next week! I love all of them except orange crush. That one was just ok.

[drapple_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

This is a hysterical book. A bit of black comedy, yet still really funny.

[addunn3 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

This is a very strange travelog of Florida which ties a little history with unusual events and locations in the state. You do have to suspend reality to get through it.

[ozzer_1 · Rating: 1 out of 5 stars]

Imagine being trapped in a hot car on an interminable road trip with an insufferable know-it-all control freak (who also happens to be homicidal) and his unbelievably stupid friend (who also happens to be a drunken dope fiend) and you get a sense of the emotions that Tim Dorsey evokes in NAKED CAME THE FLORIDA MAN. Frankly, to read this is a painful experience. Dorsey makes valiant attempts to lighten the mood with humor, but most of it fails because it is either just puerile or truly sadistic. This plot line and two others converge in the climax, which he sets at the southern end of Florida’s Lake Okeechobee. Chris is a disadvantaged girl who is straight out of Dickens. She is just too good to be very realistic. She gets straight A’s but longs to play high school football. It is not hard to see that she will become a football hero by the time this ends. Conversely, the third plot line involves a despicable homicidal criminal who makes his living by stealing treasures that others have discovered. Also, it is not hard to see that he will get his comeuppance in the end. Likewise, most of the other characters in the novel are uniformly cartoonish. They are either unbelievably good or totally evil. Clearly, Dorsey admires Florida’s history, geography and culture. Native Floridians, as opposed to “snowbirds,” retirees, and tourists, like to refer to themselves and their environs as “the other Florida.” Nevertheless, Dorsey fails to convey this by wrapping it in slapstick and having most of it come out of the mouth of the insufferable Serge, a character who is hard to admire. The “Florida man” so prevalent in the news usually represents a deeply flawed person doing something incredibly stupid or corrupt. Dorsey succeeds admirably in evoking the type here. However, his efforts to show the things he admires most about Florida fall short because they seem contrived and awkward.

[mrmapcase · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Serge is back and seems to be mellowing a bit, although he’s still crazy for all things Florida. The story alternates between him and Coleman, and a energetic young girl, and both stories come full circle to a rather satisfying conclusion.Free review copy.

[btuckertx · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

This was my first exposure to Serge and Coleman, and I must admit it took a little while to get acclimated. Once I figured out these guys were bizarre in their own strange ways, it was a fun ride, especially the sex scene. I'll be reading more of Tim Dorsey's Serge Storms books. I also appreciated the historical tour of little known Florida cemeteries, hotels, and small towns with murals.

[vicki_weisfeld · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

“ʻDon’t shoot guns into the hurricane.’ Elsewhere this would go without saying, but Floridians need to be told,” this antic crime novel begins. Dorsey takes the Florida man premise to absurd heights (or is it depths?). His hero, the aptly named Serge A. Storms, who has no discernible occupation, has plotted a picaresque adventure for himself and his dim friend, Coleman. Serge will drive them around Florida in his 50-year-old gold Plymouth Satellite, visiting the graves of past Florida luminaries. Enlightening Coleman along their route, Dorsey/Serge painlessly and idiosyncratically covers Florida’s history, sociology, meteorology, and biology. Before long, you know quite a bit more about this quirky state than you did on page one. Florida with its extreme weather, its swarms of insects, its snakes and gators, its cultural hodgepodge, its tony suburbs and ramshackle sugar cane towns easily lend themselves to Serge’s non-stop snarky commentarySeveral other plot threads, past and present, weave throughout. First is the story of the deadly 1928 hurricane that created a massive storm surge—not in the Atlantic Ocean or the Gulf of Mexico, where you’d expect, but in Lake Okeechobee—that killed some 2500 people. Pertinent to Dorsey’s tale, a rich sugar baron’s fortune in gold coins was lost in the calamity. The fate of the gold is one of the riches of this tall tale.Most of the novel is devoted to Serge and Coleman’s adventures and clearly channels Serge’s manic psyche. His mind is like a rambunctious puppy, dashing here and there, nibbling this and that. At times the two men launch into a jag of childishness, racing and chasing each other, finger-painting murals for their motel walls, dressing as clowns, and generally acting up.It’s hard to reconcile that light-hearted Serge with the man who plans (elaborately, of course) and carries out four diabolical murders. His victims aren’t blameless, but the gruesome methods by which they die almost put me off the book. But I hung in there, and I’m glad.

[ohiochris · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Another rollicking adventure with Serge and Coleman! Chock-full of Florida history and landmarks, as always. A fast, fun read full of Dorsey's humor and knowledge of little-known Florida trivia. The side-story featuring Chris is heartfelt and exiting at the climax. If you like Serge and Coleman, you'll certainly enjoy this adventure.

[tottman_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Hurricanes, lost treasure and a tour of famous Florida gravesites all come together in Naked Came the Florida Man by Tim Dorsey. The lovable, if slightly unbalanced, heroes Serge and Coleman are traveling across Florida visiting famous gravesites. They start by fleeing a current hurricane and eventually their path intersects with the present-day fallout from the Great Hurricane of 1928.Serge and Coleman make their way across Florida dispensing historic trivia as well as their own brand of justice and violence upon any wrongdoers who happened to cross their path.Long-time fans will enjoy another adventure with the quirky pair. Their interactions will have you alternately shaking your head and laughing out loud. Serge likes to dispense homespun wisdom such as “..cakes are the pole dancers of the bakery world but pie is the girl you take home to Mom.” Coleman is happy so long as he can find something to fashion a bong out of.As much as I enjoyed spending time with Serge and Coleman, I enjoyed the intersecting storyline of a young girl named Chris even more. In alternating chapters, we meet Chris when she's a young girl and follow her all the way to the end of High School. Along the way, we see her determination, her love of football and her book smarts as well as her fascination with lost treasure. She is the real hero of the story.Tim Dorsey’s love of Florida shines clearly throughout the book. He manages to create a fascinating mystery to go along with his mainstay characters, Serge and Coleman, as well as plenty of interesting side characters and villains. The love of Florida even shines through in the typeface for the chapter numbers which are reminiscent of an old “Welcome to Florida” postcard.This is another great entry in the long-running series that will sure be sure to please existing fans and is easy for those who are new to the series to jump right into. Highly recommended.I was provided a copy of this book by the publisher.

[lpg3d · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

In this latest installment of the series, Serge and Coleman travel from Lone Pine Key up to Lake Okeechobee collecting tidbits of obscure Florida history, and leaving behind a trail of bodies. I thoroughly enjoyed this book, even though by now the formula is familiar to the readers of this series. Interesting history, characters, and "science experiments."(I received a copy of this book from the publisher via LibraryThing's Early Reviewers.)

[bjkelley · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Naked Came The Florida Man - hits all the same notes that all of Tim Dorsey Serge books do - obscure history, unique ways to kill people, Coleman gets drunk/stoned, etc. My only complaint about this volume in the series is that there seems to be an overload of history but very little bad people that Serge has to teach a lesson (also known as kill them). Can't go wrong, if you like Tim Dorsey/Serge stories. I'm ready for the next one!

[stanski_2 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Serge and Coleman are off on an adventure, checking out history and much more all through the width and breadth of Florida, and they are taking you along on a marvelous journey.Serge is bent on a trip to gather rubbings of famous, and sometimes not so famous, people who are buried in Florida, and his travelling sidekick Coleman is bent on working through his supply of weed.This is a romp! The story alternates between current day, and some time in the past, and I don't think I will give away too much of the story if I tell you that these two paths will collide at the end.While this duo traipses through the state, they will invariably attempt to right some of the wrongs they encounter, in ways that only Tim Dorsey can imagine.This isn't the typical "can't put down" book, but it certainly is highly enjoyable. Try it out...you won't regret it.

[nelliemc · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

If you’ve read Dorsey’s books before, you will not be disappointed as this one is up to par. Serge and Coleman are in fine form, with Serge maybe a little more scatterbrained than before. Still snuffing out bad guys in particularly gruesome ways. The second plot, the story of a very underprivileged but very intelligent and driven girl who wants to play football is actually a little more serious than Dorsey usually gets, but he does do an excellent job of tying all the pieces together. As a sometime visitor to Florida I really enjoyed the history and geography lessons in the book as well.

[orteacher · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Tim Dorsey's latest Serge Storm book, Naked Came the Florida Man, is another tour of the strangeness of Florida with stops at many little known grave sites and small towns. At the same time, Serge is doing away with some deserving bad guys in gruesome fashions in a manner that only Florida can provide. A second plot eventually merges with the tour of Florida with justice being served.This would be a tough stand alone read as there is no backstory to introduce Serge or his sidekick Colman and how they come to be driving the back roads and why they cheerfully go bumping off villains. Nevertheless, the story is written so lightheartedly that it can be enjoyed without that.Personally, I found the history lessons to be a bit too much for the non-Floridian and the methods of execution a bit over the top. I've read Dorsey before and enjoyed his novels, this one just not as much.