53 books like Florida Roadkill

This is not a book about animals, but it is a great book in which animals play a critical role.

This is the seventh book in Hiassen’s Florida-based Skink series and possibly the best. One of the main characters, Angie Armstrong, is a wildlife wrangler with extraordinary skills which leads to hilarious consequences.

This book also manages intriguing social and political commentary including Kiki Pew Fitzsimmons’ efforts to support a fictional president whose behavior is similar and almost as wacky as our former leader who is apparently running again – I hope someone reads this book to him.

Again, it’s difficult to pick a favorite Vonnegut book. I think he may have influenced my writing more than any other author. More than Ian Fleming. More than Elmore Leonard or Raymond Chandler. Some might say he isn’t really a thriller writer. Some may classify him as a writer of sci-fi. And yeah, maybe. But he’s so much more than that. He’s a zany magician and mad scientist who can turn utter tragedy into very black comedy. Mother Night is about Nazis and spies and war crimes and white supremacists. All the elements of a thriller combined with Vonnegut’s patented absurdity. I find every one of Kurt Vonnegut’s books thrilling, thoughtful, and hilarious.  

Westlake was already a bestselling author of hard-boiled tales of a career criminal named Parker when he created that antihero’s lighter flip side, John Dortmunder, whose compatriots, capers, and consequences all come with some goofy, left-handed conceptual spin. The rock in the title is a famous African emerald, which Dortmunder and his mates set out to boost, only to find themselves having to steal the same gem a second time, and a third—eventually six heists, in all, from progressively impossible fortresses and in progressively outrageous ways. I’m inspired by the whole Dortmunder series’ blend of laugh-out-loud character pieces and genuinely inventive crime writing, and obviously I’m far from alone.

As a woman who was raised to have a moral compass, I am outraged whenever someone in authority abuses their power and gets away with it.

While I don’t condone revenge, nonetheless, I have to admit I cheered when lewd, lecherous, law-bending Florida Judge Robert “Maximum Bob” Gibbs finally gets his comeuppance and is judged guilty by a grudge-bearing malefactor and sentenced to death-by alligator, a unique means of execution, to say the least.

Ingenious, more than slightly off-kilter Elmore Leonard is the undisputed king of criminal mayhem. His wacky, raucous Maximum Bob is a delightfully dark humorous tale chocked full of zany characters; a group of magnificent miscreants Mr. Leonard created, knowing his readers would love to hate.

Maybe it’s because I’ve always been a sucker for a righteous cause that Carl Hiaasen’s riotous, rollicking, tale of muckraking to the max had me cheering his zany protagonist and one-man-wreaking-crew, Twilly Spree from the first page to the last.

Twilly Spree has dedicated himself to saving Florida's wilderness from runaway destruction. He favors in-your-face political statements - such as torching Jet-Skis or blowing up banks - that leave his human targets shaken but taught a lesson in what happens when they choose not to do what Twilly considers the right thing.

Dognapping eco-terrorists, bogus big-time hunters, a Republicans-only hooker, an infamous ex-governor who's gone back to nature, thousands of singing toads, a horde of hungry dung beetles, and a Labrador retriever greater than the sum of his Labrador parts - these are only some of the zany denizens of Carl Hiaasen’s outrageously funny Sick Puppy.

Maybe it’s because the protagonist and her group of amateur sleuths in my series manage to make every mistake imaginable before they finally succeed in bringing the real killer to justice, that I am tickled pink by Donald E. Westlake’s cast of over-the-top-miscreants.

Starring in Bank Shot, Westlake’s zany characters are more like the gang that couldn’t shoot straight. Gang leader John Dortmunder and the most inept group of criminals ever to stumble and bumble their way through an ill-fated caper are a rollicking treat that combines fast-moving suspense with laugh-out-loud wit as they attempt to steal a temporarily relocated bank that is inside a mobile home.

All Dortmunder has to do is get past seven security guards, put the bank-on-wheels in gear, and drive away. It’s a simple plan, until it all goes wrong… 

I began my ladies’ apparel sales career as a manufacturer’s representative traveling the deep Southern states where many of my accounts were located in small, rural towns that were dead ringers for Maggody, Arkansas, a hotbed of gossip and murder, and the fictional burg where Mischief in Maggo takes place.

So, of course I have a special place in my heart for Joan Hess’s cheerfully bawdy, tongue-in-cheek second book of the Arly Hanks Mystery Series.

Brilliant, unapologetic author Joan Hess gleefully created a zany cast of characters-Madame Celeste, the psychic enthralling gullible local Yokels with her predictions of doom; a crooked Mayor who also owns the overpriced grocery store, and the fire and brimstone preacher who can’t keep his pants zipped, along with a gaggle of mantra-chanting hippies who have turned the old general store into the source for “cosmic harmony.”

With the brutal murder of Robin Buchanon-a moonshiner, prostitute,… show more.

Families. What can I say? They can be weird beasts, and none less so than the family of detective Eva Rae Thomas.
A father who kidnapped her sister from a grocery store when they were children. A brother she didn’t know existed. Ignored by her family for decades, can she refuse their call for help? Many would, in a case where nothing is as it seems.

Set in the emerald cove of Florida’s Panhandle, Three Shots to the Wind by Sherry Harris is the third book in the cozy Chloe Jackson, Sea Glass Saloon Mystery series.

The characters in this series are realistic and likable and embody that sense of community that cozy mystery readers long for. A fun premise with an ex-fiancé winding up dead and her current love interest a prime suspect.

Stetson Kennedy, an environmental activist who extolled the beauty of Florida's reputation preceded him in this important book.

An influence on other writers of natural history, including Bill Belleville and Kennedy’s fourth wife Sandra Parks, the naturalist icon writes with humor and affection about his native state. Also, I love that he worked with Zora Neale Hurston on the Florida Writer’s project.