Book Review: “No Sunscreen for the Dead” by Tim Dorsey

No Sunscreen for the Dead by Tim Dorsey

Dorsey has been dropping these Serge novels every year for a long time now. These “bunch of south Florida whackos” novels (a la Dave Barry) are filled with cut and paste from the real life news from down there.

In this episode, Serge and Coleman visit retirement communities around Dorsey’s Tampa stomping ground. There are lots of retired whackos (including by now, Hiaasen, Barry, and, I assume, Dorsey), but Serge still manages to bump things up a notch.

In addition to the usual slapstick shenanigans, and Serge dealing with predators who mercilessly scam retirees in his usual way, there is an additional twist: a lot of the retirees aren’t who they seem to be.

During the cold war, there were hundreds of spies, moles, counter spies, double agents, triple agents in Florida and elsewhere.  These days, these people are retired, many in Florida, some with second identities.

Serge walks into the middle of a nasty situation. Someone seems to mopping up some of the old spies / counter spies / whatever.  There is a spate of “murder suicides” of old people, who just might have been secret cold warriors.   Soon enough, cops, reporters, and even a commercial data mining company are hit.

With Serge on the case, this is likely to end badly. Or at least noisily.

In earlier novels, we’ve seen gormless Coleman find his own tribe—spring breaking college kids.  In this novel, Serge discovers his own tribe—retired seniors.  These people are straight arrows, willing (if not so able) to fight for what is right.  And they know and treasure their Florida history. Serge is prodigious and obsessive Florida trivia buff, but old people were there and, not to fine a point, actually lived it, did it, and  built it.

Oh, and, leave it to Serge to find where Amish families retire in Florida.

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1. Tim Dorsey, No Sunscreen for the Dead, New York, William Morrow, 2019.

 

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