tourist season book review

BOOK REVIEW: Tourist Season by Brenda Novak

Tourist Season by Brenda Novak

Mira (april 2, 2024), contemporary womens fiction.

A summer by the ocean promises new beginnings—until old secrets resurface.

Ismay Chalmers is ready for a relaxing summer reconnecting with her fiancé at his family’s luxurious beachfront cottage. But before Remy can join her, a hurricane bears down on Mariners Island. Alone in the large house, Ismay makes a disturbing discovery in Remy’s childhood closet. She’s not sure what to make of it, but is relieved when the property’s caretaker, Bo, checks in on her.

Bo’s home is damaged, so they temporarily shelter together, and Ismay is comforted by his quiet strength. But the unannounced arrival of a family member puts Bo back at his place and changes Ismay’s summer into something other than what she wants—or ever expected. With so many reasons to feel unsettled, Ismay finds herself turning to Bo, who gives her more than a sense of security; there’s something about him that makes her feel alive, stirring her to wonder what life might be like if she chose a different path…

As Ismay grows closer to Bo, she begins to hope the reclusive caretaker might eventually let down his guard. But when she finds out that he has secrets, too, she begins to question how well she knows any of the men in her life—and how well she can trust her own heart.

EXCERPT & BUY LINKS:

Tourist Season | Brenda Novak

TOURIST SEASON is a captivating read with many layers. The setting is a character in itself. There are hidden secrets, family drama, a bit of romance, and a big mystery. I liked the chemistry with all the characters. I thought the characters were very well developed. The twins were just bad apples but I enjoyed their role in the story. Bo was a favorite; he is very caring while trying to keep to himself. Ismay gives everyone the benefit of the doubt and truly looks for the good. Well written and highly recommend.

Reviewed by Comfy Chair Books/Lisa Reigel (April 2, 2024)

Bought copy via the Brenda Novak Monthly Book Box (April)

#TouristSeason #BrendaNovak #BrendaNovakBookBox #MIRA #WomensFiction #BookClubRead @authorbrendanovak #brendanovakbookboxes @_mira_books_ #mirabooks #bookstagram #comfychairbooks #bookreviewer #bookreview #bookblogger #booklover #bookclubbish #HarlequinTradePublishing

ABOUT THE AUTHOR:

Brenda Novak, a New York Times and USA TODAY bestselling author, has penned over sixty novels. She is a five-time nominee for the RITA Award and has won the National Reader’s Choice, the Bookseller’s Best, the Bookbuyer’s Best, and many other awards. She also runs Brenda Novak for the Cure, a charity to raise money for diabetes research (her youngest son has this disease). To date, she’s raised $2.5 million. For more about Brenda, please visit www.brendanovak.com .

TWITTER: @Brenda_Novak

FB: @BrendaNovakAuthor

Insta: @authorbrendanovak

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TOURIST SEASON

by Carl Hiaasen ‧ RELEASE DATE: March 24, 1986

Satiric mystery adventure about a crazed Miami reporter and an eruption of bloodlust meant to drive off the tourists and developers. It's December and the loyal Shriners have arrived in southern Florida for their annual Miami Beach bash. Theodore Bellamy goes out for a swim with his wife Nell, gets stung by a man-of-war and after two fake "lifeguards" take him off to a hospital, disappears. What happens to B.D. "Sparky" Harper, President of the Greater Miami Chamber of Commerce, is much worse: with a toy rubber alligator stuffed down his throat, his 190 pounds (smeared with suntan oil) are chewed off at the knees and stuffed into a piece of Samsonite luggage, head and all—wearing black wraparound sunglasses. And that's just the start of varied bombings, an aerial assault (dropping rattlesnakes) on a cruise ship, and other horrors perpetrated by the so-called "El Fuego, Comandante, Las Noches de Diciembre" (The Fire, the Nights of December). Brian Keyes, private investigator, is hired to help defend Ernesto Cabal, small-time burglar accused of murdering Harper for his car. Brian's investigation eventually circles back to the Miami Sun—where there are many, many nuts, chief of whom is Skip Wiley, a once-celebrated columnist whose lunatic writings are so bizarre that his own editor has put Wiley and his columns under psychiatric examination. Chief terrorist Wiley at last kidnaps the Orange Bowl Queen and stakes her onto a coral isle that is about to be dynamited for later bulldozing by land developers. What Wiley hates is "an entire generation of blow-dried rapists with phones in their Volvos and five-million-dollar lines of credit and secretaries who give head"—i.e., greedy, blind land-developers. Hiaasen gives an up-to-date sharpness to the old Hecht-MacArthur Front Page cynicism as he slices up limbs for his boiling pot-of-horrors. With this kind of thick-skinned black humor, real feelings would be intrusive—even about ecology and the rape of Florida. Everything is sacrificed to a news-hound humor that is as forced as it is cynical. But if you like your gallows laughs with gall, this could be for you.

Pub Date: March 24, 1986

ISBN: 0446695718

Page Count: 416

Publisher: Putnam

Review Posted Online: Sept. 26, 2011

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 1986

LITERARY FICTION | SUSPENSE | SUSPENSE | GENERAL THRILLER & SUSPENSE

Share your opinion of this book

More by Carl Hiaasen

BOOK REVIEW

by Carl Hiaasen

by Carl Hiaasen ; illustrated by Roz Chast

Awards & Accolades

Our Verdict

New York Times Bestseller

by Max Brooks ‧ RELEASE DATE: June 16, 2020

A tasty, if not always tasteful, tale of supernatural mayhem that fans of King and Crichton alike will enjoy.

Are we not men? We are—well, ask Bigfoot, as Brooks does in this delightful yarn, following on his bestseller World War Z (2006).

A zombie apocalypse is one thing. A volcanic eruption is quite another, for, as the journalist who does a framing voice-over narration for Brooks’ latest puts it, when Mount Rainier popped its cork, “it was the psychological aspect, the hyperbole-fueled hysteria that had ended up killing the most people.” Maybe, but the sasquatches whom the volcano displaced contributed to the statistics, too, if only out of self-defense. Brooks places the epicenter of the Bigfoot war in a high-tech hideaway populated by the kind of people you might find in a Jurassic Park franchise: the schmo who doesn’t know how to do much of anything but tries anyway, the well-intentioned bleeding heart, the know-it-all intellectual who turns out to know the wrong things, the immigrant with a tough backstory and an instinct for survival. Indeed, the novel does double duty as a survival manual, packed full of good advice—for instance, try not to get wounded, for “injury turns you from a giver to a taker. Taking up our resources, our time to care for you.” Brooks presents a case for making room for Bigfoot in the world while peppering his narrative with timely social criticism about bad behavior on the human side of the conflict: The explosion of Rainier might have been better forecast had the president not slashed the budget of the U.S. Geological Survey, leading to “immediate suspension of the National Volcano Early Warning System,” and there’s always someone around looking to monetize the natural disaster and the sasquatch-y onslaught that follows. Brooks is a pro at building suspense even if it plays out in some rather spectacularly yucky episodes, one involving a short spear that takes its name from “the sucking sound of pulling it out of the dead man’s heart and lungs.” Grossness aside, it puts you right there on the scene.

Pub Date: June 16, 2020

ISBN: 978-1-9848-2678-7

Page Count: 304

Publisher: Del Rey/Ballantine

Review Posted Online: Feb. 9, 2020

Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2020

GENERAL SCIENCE FICTION & FANTASY | GENERAL THRILLER & SUSPENSE | SCIENCE FICTION

More by Max Brooks

by Max Brooks

More About This Book

BOOK TO SCREEN

A CONSPIRACY OF BONES

by Kathy Reichs ‧ RELEASE DATE: March 17, 2020

Forget about solving all these crimes; the signal triumph here is (spoiler) the heroine’s survival.

Another sweltering month in Charlotte, another boatload of mysteries past and present for overworked, overstressed forensic anthropologist Temperance Brennan.

A week after the night she chases but fails to catch a mysterious trespasser outside her town house, some unknown party texts Tempe four images of a corpse that looks as if it’s been chewed by wild hogs, because it has been. Showboat Medical Examiner Margot Heavner makes it clear that, breaking with her department’s earlier practice ( The Bone Collection , 2016, etc.), she has no intention of calling in Tempe as a consultant and promptly identifies the faceless body herself as that of a young Asian man. Nettled by several errors in Heavner’s analysis, and even more by her willingness to share the gory details at a press conference, Tempe launches her own investigation, which is not so much off the books as against the books. Heavner isn’t exactly mollified when Tempe, aided by retired police detective Skinny Slidell and a host of experts, puts a name to the dead man. But the hints of other crimes Tempe’s identification uncovers, particularly crimes against children, spur her on to redouble her efforts despite the new M.E.’s splenetic outbursts. Before he died, it seems, Felix Vodyanov was linked to a passenger ferry that sank in 1994, an even earlier U.S. government project to research biological agents that could control human behavior, the hinky spiritual retreat Sparkling Waters, the dark web site DeepUnder, and the disappearances of at least four schoolchildren, two of whom have also turned up dead. And why on earth was Vodyanov carrying Tempe’s own contact information? The mounting evidence of ever more and ever worse skulduggery will pull Tempe deeper and deeper down what even she sees as a rabbit hole before she confronts a ringleader implicated in “Drugs. Fraud. Breaking and entering. Arson. Kidnapping. How does attempted murder sound?”

Pub Date: March 17, 2020

ISBN: 978-1-9821-3888-2

Page Count: 352

Publisher: Scribner

Review Posted Online: Dec. 22, 2019

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2020

GENERAL MYSTERY & DETECTIVE | GENERAL THRILLER & SUSPENSE | MYSTERY & DETECTIVE | SUSPENSE | THRILLER | DETECTIVES & PRIVATE INVESTIGATORS | SUSPENSE | GENERAL & DOMESTIC THRILLER

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by Kathy Reichs

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Word of Mouth

Submitting a book for review, write the editor, you are here:, tourist season.

A vacationing Shriner disappears, the only clue to his demise --- his fez awash on a Miami beach. The director of the Chamber of Commerce dies with a toy rubber alligator in his throat. It's the height of South Florida's tourist season and the Orange Bowl is nigh. The Chamber of Commerce is panicked as more tourists vanish. Will Brian Keyes, former reporter turned PI, be able to stop the eco-terrorist carnage by crocodile? We are introduced to Hiaasen's singularly twisted and rollicking sense of humor in this, the first of Hiaasen's South Florida fiendishly funny thrillers.

Reviewed by Roz Shea on January 23, 2011

Tourist Season by Carl Hiaasen

• Publication Date: February 1, 1987
• Genres: Fiction , Mystery
• Mass Market Paperback: 384 pages
• Publisher: Warner Books
• ISBN-10: 0446343455
• ISBN-13: 9780446343459

Cannonball Read 16

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Tourist Season – Carl Hiaasen (1986)

Tourist Season by Carl Hiaasen

March 31, 2021 by vel veeter Leave a Comment

I don’t know what to make of this novel, and maybe it’s a case of well, they don’t make them like this anymore. It’s an oddly rich and literary-adjacent mystery novel, it’s also fast and loose with racist and homophobic slurs (some that serve the narrative, and some that don’t — it’s one thing to have a character who would casually toss out slurs as part of their nature, but there’s also a sign of the times casualness with some of the language that makes it rough going).

The plot here is that we have a right-wing terrorist group that is looking for a cause. It’s kind of a post-Castro Cuban group (similar in ways to the fascist terrorism group in The Day of the Jackyl), and it’s also an anti-capitalist, pro-environmental group, but not really as what they really want to do is save Florida from becoming a vacation hellhole, and it’s kind late 70s Black separatist group, but again, not really.

Our detective is a former journalist who is hired in part because his ex-wife is married (maybe there’s no marriage involved, I forget) to the de facto leader of the group, another writer clearly shaped off a vague memory of Hunter S Thompson. There’s a former pro football star, and there some Cuban dissidents. The whole thing is a swamp-filled, vacation home, tourist trap kind of romp. The group is killing tourists, fighting against the rampant development of the Keys, and plenty of other things.

Like I said, it’s oddly literary-adjacent and a rich novel over all, and is a lot of fun at times, when I wasn’t wincing from the 30 odd years of social progress the novel has not gone through. It’s like Thomas Pynchon’s Inherent Vice-lite-lite-lite, mixed with either Sunshine State by John Sayles, maybe a little Karen Russell and Kristen Arnett, and then a dose of Elmore Leonard.

(Photo: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/13064.Tourist_Season)

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Look Inside

Tourist Season

A Suspense Thriller

By Carl Hiaasen

Category: suspense & thriller | crime fiction, category: crime fiction | suspense & thriller.

Nov 01, 2016 | ISBN 9780399587146 | 5-1/2 x 8-1/4 --> | ISBN 9780399587146 --> Buy

Mar 24, 1986 | ISBN 9781101436653 | ISBN 9781101436653 --> Buy

Buy from Other Retailers:

Nov 01, 2016 | ISBN 9780399587146

Mar 24, 1986 | ISBN 9781101436653

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About Tourist Season

Take a trip to exotic South Florida with this dark, funny book that established Carl Hiaasen as one of the top mystery writers in the game. The first sign of trouble is a Shriner’s fez washed up on a Miami beach. The next is a suitcase containing the almost-legless body of the local chamber of commerce president found floating in a canal… The locals are desperate to keep the murders under wraps and the tourist money flowing. But it will take a reporter-turned–private eye to make sense of a caper that mixes football players, politicians, and one very hungry crocodile in this classic mystery that GQ called “one of the top ten destination reads of all time.”

Also by Carl Hiaasen

About Carl Hiaasen

CARL HIAASEN was born and raised in Florida. He is the author of fourteen previous novels, including the best sellers Bad Monkey, Lucky You, Nature Girl, Razor Girl, Sick Puppy, Skinny Dip, and Star Island, as well as six best-selling children’s books, Hoot, Flush, Scat,… More about Carl Hiaasen

Product Details

Category: suspense & thriller | crime fiction, category: crime fiction | suspense & thriller, people who read tourist season also read.

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Praise for Tourist Season “Brash mystery adventure…ferocious fun….There’s a fresh breeze, if not a full-scale hurricane, up from Miami. Hiaasen, himself a columnist for the Miami Herald , writes with sardonic wit in a style so breezy that you want to hang on to the mast with both hands.”—Marilyn Stasio, The Columbus Dispatch “A terrific send-up of Floridiana…zany…satire as withering as a Dade County frost at the peak of citrus harvest…one novelist who never seems to forget for a minute that a chief purpose of any work of fiction is to entertain.”— The Cleveland Plain Dealer “A remarkable example of what talented writers are doing these days with the mystery novel.”—Tony Hillerman, The New York Times Book Review “Makes Miami Vice look like Terry and the Pirates ….I can’t remember another novel that combines violence and comedy as successfully.”—John D. MacDonald, New York Times bestselling author of the Travis McGee series “Fiendish suspense and wicked black humor…does for Florida what Candy did for sex, and what Semi-Tough did for football. A rollicking, exciting, exceptional book.”—John Katzenbach, New York Times bestselling author of Hart’s War “Ferocious and ferociously funny. You race through its pages at a gallop.”—John Godey, New York Times bestselling author of The Taking of Pelham One Two Three “A most engaging novel….Hiaasen has perfectly blended black humor with stark terror.”—Associated Press “A wonderful achievement, continuously inventive and surprising, very funny but deadly serious beneath the laughs. Hiassen’s voice is his own…a hell of a job.”—Pete Hamill, New York Times bestselling author of Forever “Wondrously told! Tourist Season is what we read novels for—high entertainment and high excitement.”—Richard Condon, author of Prizzi’s Honor

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Tourist Season

A summer by the ocean promises new beginnings—until old secrets resurface.

Ismay Chalmers is ready for a relaxing summer reconnecting with her fiancé at his family’s luxurious beachfront cottage. But before Remy can join her, a hurricane bears down on Mariners Island. Alone in the large house, Ismay makes a disturbing discovery in Remy’s childhood closet. She’s not sure what to make of it, but is relieved when the property’s caretaker, Bo, checks in on her.

Bo’s home is damaged, so they temporarily shelter together, and Ismay is comforted by his quiet strength. But the unannounced arrival of a family member puts Bo back at his place and changes Ismay’s summer into something other than what she wants—or ever expected. With so many reasons to feel unsettled, Ismay finds herself turning to Bo, who gives her more than a sense of security; there’s something about him that makes her feel alive, stirring her to wonder what life might be like if she chose a different path…

As Ismay grows closer to Bo, she begins to hope the reclusive caretaker might eventually let down his guard. But when she finds out that he has secrets, too, she begins to question how well she knows any of the men in her life—and how well she can trust her own heart.

Order Autographed Copy

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ISBN-13: 9780778305408 ISBN-10: 0778305406

ISBN-13: 9780778305408 • ISBN-10: 0778305406

Also Available in Audio

Harlequin Audio April 2, 2024 Narrated by: Amy McFadden Length: 12 hrs Apple Audiobooks Audible Barnes & Noble Google Play Kobo Libro.fm

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Book Review: ‘Tourist Season: A Novel’ By Brenda Novak

by RedCarpetCrash | Mar 13, 2024 | Books | 0 comments

The book is in stores on Tuesday, April 2nd from MIRA.

Ismay has just passed the bar and is now a lawyer. Her fiancée Remy is still in California, studying to take his medical exam to become a doctor. They’re planning on spending most of the summer at his families beachfront property estate (they are filthy rich), on the island of Mariners, near Cape Cod. As soon as she gets there a hurricane hits, and she’s all by herself, except for the caretaker Bo, who has a secret past, who looks after her, and feels an attraction to him. In Remy’s old bedroom she finds a shocking discovery and it freaks her out. Once the storm passes, she helps Bo clean up, until Remy’s twin brother shows up and he’s trouble. As the day and weeks pass on, her brother Jake comes to the island, after his wife leaves him. Then Ismay gets a shocking text, has issues with Remy, and falls for Bo. As secrets are revealed, Ismay doesn’t feel safe and isn’t sure who she can trust. This is another good character-driven novel, that only Brenda Novak can write. You follow along with these characters and get emotionally invested with them. With some well place twists, this is one you won’t put down.

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Tourist Season

Take a trip to exotic South Florida with this dark, funny book that established Carl Hiaasen as one of the top mystery writers in the game

The first sign of trouble is a Shriner's fez washed up on a Miami beach. The next is a suitcase containing the almost-legless body of the local chamber of commerce president found floating in a canal...

The locals are desperate to keep the murders under wraps and the tourist money flowing. But it will take a reporter-turned–private eye to make sense of a caper that mixes football players, politicians, and one very hungry crocodile in this classic mystery that  GQ  called “one of the top ten destination reads of all time.”

Movie Reviews

Tv/streaming, collections, great movies, chaz's journal, contributors, the tourist returns for tumultuous second season on netflix.

The first season of “The Tourist” was a clever little thriller over on Max, but that company continued its cavalcade of confusing choices and dumped the second outing, allowing the show to travel to Netflix, where it has been consistently in the top ten for the entirety of February as audiences caught up with year one. That fun season is now followed by a very twisted second one, a 6-episode outing that moves the action from Australia to Ireland—switching the title character if you think about it from one protagonist to the other—and upping the surreal, unpredictable sense of dark humor. It’s a bit of a rockier road in terms of quality, but there’s an admirable lunacy to the storytelling here that holds it together, throwing in new twists and memorable characters in a manner that’s reminiscent of prime Coen brothers, wherein one never knew what was going to happen next, and it was all darkly humorous at the same time. While Danielle Macdonald gets a little lost in the late-season emotion of this year, Jamie Dornan really holds it all together with a deceptively natural, engaging performance. It’s insane Max ever let him go.

The first season of “The Tourist” has a beautiful simplicity in its story of a man who wakes up after a car accident in the Outback with no idea of who he is or how he got there, only to discover that he may not like the guy he used to be. With so many questions answered in what could have been a self-contained season, one might wonder how they could do it again—amnesia a second time? The writers smartly move the action back to Elliot’s (Dornan) homeland in season two as he and Helen (Macdonald) travel there to learn more details about his dark past after receiving a mysterious photo. Before they even really get a pint in them, Elliot is kidnapped and thrown into the middle of a generation-spanning turf war between the families of the Cassidys and the McDonnells. The latter is led by the vicious Frank ( Francis Magee ) and the former by none other than our hero’s mother, Niamh (the excellent Olwen Fouéré ).

A season that opens by separating its heroes and sending one to a remote island where he’s kept prisoner has about a dozen other twists up its sleeve that I wouldn't dare spoil here, as that's the joy of watching the show. Everyone on “The Tourist” hides an odd secret or two, even the seemingly ordinary detective ( Conor MacNeill ), who has something insane going on in his basement. When Helen sees her potential mother-in-law commit murder in the premiere it’s just the beginning of a series of narrative turns that stress that classic suspension of disbelief. “The Tourist” is like those page-turning novels you read on a beach, wherein each chapter ends with an insane new revelation that forces you to read the next before you question if it actually makes any sense at all. It’s really the show’s strength: A sense of breakneck plotting in an era when everyone feels like every show is a few episodes too long for its threadbare plot.

If the plotting is the strength, the emotions of the second season feel a bit like a weakness at times. The love story between Helen and Elliot takes center stage in rather intense ways, and it leads to a number of heartwrenching scenes, especially in the back half, that feel overly melodramatic. “The Tourist” is at its best when it’s not taking itself very seriously, having fun with its characters. Every time it diverts to really define Helen and Elliot’s eternal love, the seams in the writing start to show, and Macdonald gets lost a few times this season in overwrought melodrama that feels unearned. Luckily, she’s balanced by a truly great Dornan performance, one that seems to be honestly responding to every loony twist thrown his way. It’s more subdued that season one, allowing him to be the center as the chaotic world spins around him.

No one really understands what the heck is going on over at Max that they keep canceling movies and dropping content—an underreported recent head scratcher was allowing “Band of Brothers” to be on Netflix while “ Masters of the Air ” was dropping on Apple, which surely reignited interest in the original Playtone production in a manner that one would think would have sent people back to Max, but whatever. Letting “The Tourist” slide over to Netflix may be low on the list of their insane decisions of late, but it’s been funny to watch it slay for the competition, and it's hard to believe that the second season won’t do exactly the same. It’s funny to consider the executives who made the decision to let “The Tourist” go watching this effective second season on Netflix themselves, probably wondering why there aren’t more shows like it on Max.

Whole season screened for review. On Netflix February 29th.

Brian Tallerico

Brian Tallerico is the Managing Editor of RogerEbert.com, and also covers television, film, Blu-ray, and video games. He is also a writer for Vulture, The Playlist, The New York Times, and GQ, and the President of the Chicago Film Critics Association.

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Tourist Season Kindle Edition

• Print length 388 pages
• Language English
• Sticky notes On Kindle Scribe
• Publisher Berkley
• Publication date March 24, 1986
• Reading age 18 years and up
• File size 1154 KB
• Page Flip Enabled
• Word Wise Enabled
• Enhanced typesetting Enabled
• See all details

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• ASIN ‏ : ‎ B003ZK58UE
• Publisher ‏ : ‎ Berkley; 1st edition (March 24, 1986)
• Publication date ‏ : ‎ March 24, 1986
• Language ‏ : ‎ English
• File size ‏ : ‎ 1154 KB
• Text-to-Speech ‏ : ‎ Enabled
• Screen Reader ‏ : ‎ Supported
• Enhanced typesetting ‏ : ‎ Enabled
• X-Ray ‏ : ‎ Enabled
• Word Wise ‏ : ‎ Enabled
• Sticky notes ‏ : ‎ On Kindle Scribe
• Print length ‏ : ‎ 388 pages
• #89 in Dark Humor
• #534 in Private Investigator Mysteries (Kindle Store)
• #618 in Private Investigator Mysteries (Books)

About the author

Carl hiaasen.

Carl Hiaasen was born and raised in Florida, where he still lives. He is a prize-winning journalist with a regular column in the Miami Herald and many articles in varied magazines. He started writing crime fiction in the early 1980s and has recently branched out into children's books; he has also had several works of non-fiction published.

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