In Tim Dorsey’s newly released The Riptide Ultra-Glide, available now at your nearest favorite new bookstore, Wisconsinites Patrick and Barbara McDougall are Florida-bound for a romantic vacation after being laid off. Their chosen motel is anything but paradisical, and the two prosaic Midwesterners pitch in make the best of it. Before long a comedy of errors prevents their departure. A modern Mexican-American War is being fought between the Kentucky mafia and the Oxy cartel over control of the lucrative pain clinic market in Fort Lauderdale. Latinos keep turning up dead as hippie hillbillies are stumbling down the beachfront trampling sand castles, and undercover cops keep busting formerly respected doctors for turning illegal profits.
This book captivates from page 1 to page 294 with many different elements to wonder over. Sarge and Coleman's easy going attitude ensures success via dumb luck. All the side stories were entertaining without diverting from the main narrative. The Florida sunshine backlights Sarge and Colman's sense of duty, the generalized absurdity of modern life from the micro- to the macrocosmic. Main chartacters Serge and Coleman, or “Captain Florida” and his perpetually altered sidekick, begin this novel cruising down U.S. 1, on a mission to film the best reality show ever. Back at their motel, the McDougalls are peeking out the curtains, having become very popular, especially with Serge, who considers them the perfect stars for the aforementioned series.
The Riptide Ultra-Glide is full of drug-references and drug-related humor, thus will strike some readers as vulgar, crude, crass, and other disparaging buzzwords. It bristles with one-liners, tending towards towards short-form humor throughout its first half. But Dorsey’s approach suits perfectly the purposely-ludicrious vein of comedy, and as such, is an unqualified success in living up to its own proposed motif. Among other inquiries readers will make as they proceed through this book: Are the McDougalls safer with Serge or should they take their chances on the mean streets? Will Coleman get tired of signing autographs? Can pelicans be used as murder weapons? Is time running out for our heroes? And, finally, the question still on everyone's lips: What's up with Florida? Stay tuned for all the answers in . . . The Riptide Ultra-Glide!
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