The Riptide Ultra-Glide

Bestseller Dorsey serves up his usual mix of mayhem and mirth in his 16th Serge Storms thriller (after 2012’s Pineapple Grenade). As Serge—accompanied by his stoner companion, Coleman, who acts as straight man and one-man audience for Serge’s frequently baffling behavior—travels through Florida, he spouts weird bits of state history and dishes out inventive and unusual punishments to annoying miscreants. In particular, Serge, who aims for his own reality show (“You have to fake a lot of stuff”), deals with a beach bully, a rip-off artist preying on the elderly, incompetent doctors, shyster lawyers, pain clinics, and a budding turf battle between the Kentucky mafia and Mexican drug lords. Meanwhile, laid-off Wisconsin school teachers Barbara and Patrick McDougall embark on a Florida vacation that they will regret. Serge, the McDougalls, and the warring traffickers collide on a course that proves often hilarious and sometimes fatal. 10-city author tour. Agent: Nat Sobel, Sobel Weber. (Feb.)