ATOMIC LOBSTER
Tim Dorsey
William Morrow
Fiction
ISBN: 9780060829698

Tim Dorsey’s work has always been informed by his canny, nasty and very funny insight into the foibles of human nature in general and the residents of South Florida in particular. Serge A. Storms, his lovingly deranged, serial-killing anti-hero, is a sympathetic character --- up to a certain, shifting, indefinable point --- because of his victims. Serge picks nefarious drug dealers, purse snatchers who prey on senior citizens, bullies and the decent folk among us. Coleman, Serge’s sidekick, is a drug-addled burnout, along to provide assistance as a homicidal go-fer, not to mention occasional comic relief.

In ATOMIC LOBSTER, Dorsey brings back some old friends as well as mortal enemies into the mythos, though familiarity with what has gone before is not a prerequisite for enjoyment. Chief among them is Jim Davenport, a human pushover doll whose encounter with Serge in TRIGGERFISH TWIST left Davenport hoping that he’d never see him again. A series of coincidences --- South Florida is just one big small town, after all --- brings Serge and Davenport closer and closer together until they wind up living on the same street, and fortuitously so.

Tex McGraw, the nominal head of Florida’s meanest outlaw clan, has just been released from jail and is hell-bent on revenge against Davenport, who accidentally killed McGraw’s brother. Meanwhile, Davenport’s daughter is engaged to be married to an insufferable womanizer with no visible means of support other than a rapidly depleting trust fund.

The Diaz Brothers, most famously characterized in HAMMERHEAD RANCH MOTEL, are seeking a more lucrative source of income than is possible as hotel proprietors. When one of them moonlights with a moving company charged with relocating the Davenports to their new home, you can see the collisions coming from a long way off. They come quickly and furiously in ATOMIC LOBSTER, beginning with a drop off of the Sunshine Bridge and ending aboard a cruise ship that is no love boat, not with Serge A. Storms aboard. Oh, and speaking of love, Johnny Vegas, the Accidental Virgin, is back as well. Does he fare any better here than he has in previous works? Should you even ask?

Dorsey skewers everyone here --- his descriptions of the people boarding a cruise ship are worth the price of admission alone --- and the manner in which he captures the unreasonable sense of entitlement that seems to have possessed folks these days is first-rate, simultaneously dead-on and hilarious. If ATOMIC LOBSTER doesn’t increase Dorsey’s readership one-hundredfold while sending both new fans and old friends scurrying for his backlist, then nothing will.

    --- Reviewed by Joe Hartlaub

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