Regular price: $29.37
Sunshine State trivia buff Serge A. Storms loves eliminating jerks and pests. His drug-addled partner Coleman loves cartoons. Hot stripper Sharon Rhodes loves cocaine, especially when purchased with rich dead men's money. On the other hand, there's Sean and David, who love fishing and are kind to animals - and who are about to cross paths with a suitcase filled with $5 million in stolen insurance money. Serge wants the suitcase. Sharon wants the suitcase. Coleman wants more drugs... and the suitcase.
Beneath the Pacific Ocean a volcano surges upward, carrying in its fiery heart a mineral more powerful than uranium. When the volcano breaks the ocean's surface, nations will battle to control what is known as Vulcan's Forge - a source of limitless, clean, nuclear power.
Unemployed at 29, Tess Monaghan is willing to take any freelance job to pay the rent - including a bit of unorthodox snooping for her rowing buddy, Darryl "Rock" Paxton. In a city where someone is murdered almost every day, attorney Michael Abramowitz's death should be just another statistic. But the slain lawyer's notoriety - and his noontime trysts with Rock's fiancée - make the case front page news...and point to Rock as the likely murderer.
Clare Cosi used to manage the historic Village Blend coffeehouse…until she opted for quieter pastures and a more suburban life. But after ten years and a little friendly cajoling from the owner (a fresh pot of Jamaican Blue Mountain was all it took), she's back to the grind. With a sprawling rent-free apartment directly above the Village Blend, her cat Java by her side, and plenty of coffeehouse redecorating ideas, Clare is thrilled to return to work. Until she discovers the assistant manager unconscious in the back of the store, coffee grounds strewn everywhere.
Lieutenant Jacqueline "Jack" Daniels is having a bad week. Her live-in boyfriend has left her for his personal trainer, chronic insomnia has caused her to max out her credit cards with late-night home shopping purchases, and a frightening killer who calls himself "The Gingerbread Man" is dumping mutilated bodies in her district.
France, July 1944: a month after the Allied landings in Normandy, and the liberation of Europe is under way. In the Pas-de-Calais, Nathalie Mercier, a young British Special Operations executive secret agent working with the French Resistance, disappears. In London, her husband, Owen Quinn, an officer with Royal Navy Intelligence, discovers the truth about her role in the Allies' sophisticated deception at the heart of D-Day.
Sunshine State trivia buff Serge A. Storms loves eliminating jerks and pests. His drug-addled partner Coleman loves cartoons. Hot stripper Sharon Rhodes loves cocaine, especially when purchased with rich dead men's money. On the other hand, there's Sean and David, who love fishing and are kind to animals - and who are about to cross paths with a suitcase filled with $5 million in stolen insurance money. Serge wants the suitcase. Sharon wants the suitcase. Coleman wants more drugs... and the suitcase.
Beneath the Pacific Ocean a volcano surges upward, carrying in its fiery heart a mineral more powerful than uranium. When the volcano breaks the ocean's surface, nations will battle to control what is known as Vulcan's Forge - a source of limitless, clean, nuclear power.
Unemployed at 29, Tess Monaghan is willing to take any freelance job to pay the rent - including a bit of unorthodox snooping for her rowing buddy, Darryl "Rock" Paxton. In a city where someone is murdered almost every day, attorney Michael Abramowitz's death should be just another statistic. But the slain lawyer's notoriety - and his noontime trysts with Rock's fiancée - make the case front page news...and point to Rock as the likely murderer.
Clare Cosi used to manage the historic Village Blend coffeehouse…until she opted for quieter pastures and a more suburban life. But after ten years and a little friendly cajoling from the owner (a fresh pot of Jamaican Blue Mountain was all it took), she's back to the grind. With a sprawling rent-free apartment directly above the Village Blend, her cat Java by her side, and plenty of coffeehouse redecorating ideas, Clare is thrilled to return to work. Until she discovers the assistant manager unconscious in the back of the store, coffee grounds strewn everywhere.
Lieutenant Jacqueline "Jack" Daniels is having a bad week. Her live-in boyfriend has left her for his personal trainer, chronic insomnia has caused her to max out her credit cards with late-night home shopping purchases, and a frightening killer who calls himself "The Gingerbread Man" is dumping mutilated bodies in her district.
France, July 1944: a month after the Allied landings in Normandy, and the liberation of Europe is under way. In the Pas-de-Calais, Nathalie Mercier, a young British Special Operations executive secret agent working with the French Resistance, disappears. In London, her husband, Owen Quinn, an officer with Royal Navy Intelligence, discovers the truth about her role in the Allies' sophisticated deception at the heart of D-Day.
Amelia Peabody inherited two things from her father: a considerable fortune and an unbendable will. The first allowed her to indulge in her life's passion. Without the second, the mummy's curse would have made corpses of them all.
The daughter of a baronet and minor heiress, Rosalind Thorne was nearly ruined after her father abandoned the family. To survive in the only world she knew, she began to manage the affairs of some of London society's most influential women, who rely on her wit and discretion. So when artistocratic wastrel Jasper Aimesworth is found dead in London's most exclusive ballroom, Almack's, Rosalind must use her skills and connections to uncover the killer.
Baking is an alchemical process for Corinna Chapman. At four am she starts work at Earthly Delights, her bakery in Calico Alley. But one morning Corinna receives a threatening note saying "The wages of sin is death" and finds a syringe in her cat's paw. A blue-faced junkie has collapsed in the dark alley and a mysterious man with beautiful eyes appears with a plan for Corinna and her bread. Then it is Goths, dead drug addicts, witchcraft, a homeless boy and a missing girl and it seems she will never get those muffins cooked in time.
Knocking off a bank or an armored truck is merely crude. Knocking off an entire republic has, I feel, a certain style." So says mining magnate Sir James Manson, a shadowy titan of London's financial district, who is scheming a coup d'état in the small West African dictatorship of Zangaro, where a secret source of platinum lies waiting to be exploited.
From its first moments, Hunter takes you on a nonstop thrill ride: from the top floor of the CIA, to the marbled corridors of Capitol Hill...from the posh hotels of downtown Washington, to the city's mean, violent streets. It introduces a colorful new hero for our time - and a dazzling heroine every bit his equal. A spy mystery...a crime thriller...a passionate romance: Hunter is a genre-bending novel unlike any you've read. Deviously plotted, filled with vivid characters, and propelled at a breakneck pace.
Ben McKelvie believes he's moving up in the world when he and his fiancée buy a house in the cushy Washington, DC, suburb of Barcroft. Instead he's moving down - way down - thanks to Madeleine Roux, the crazy neighbor whose vermin-infested property is a permanent eyesore and looming hazard to public health. First Ben's fiancée leaves him; then his dog dies, apparently killed by a predator drawn into Barcroft by Madeleine's noxious menagerie. But the worst is yet to come for Ben.
Former movie star Jenna Hughes left Hollywood for an isolated farm in Oregon to get away from fame. But someone has followed her-an obsessed fan whose letters are personal and deeply disturbing. While Jenna’s already shaken up by what she’s seen on paper, she’d be terrified if she knew what Sheriff Shane Carter is investigating. It’s a shocking case that started with the discovery of a dead woman in the woods.
He performs his profane ceremony in a wooded Minneapolis park, anointing his victims, then setting the bodies ablaze. He has already claimed three lives, and he won't stop there. Only this time there is a witness. But she isn't talking. Enter Kate Conlan, former FBI agent turned victim/witness advocate. Not even she can tell if the reluctant witness is a potential victim or something more troubling still.
Loyal. Beautiful. Professional. Impeccably organized. Potentially lethal. Sarah Stevens is a woman with many distinct qualities. First and foremost a butler par excellence, skilled at running large households smoothly and efficiently, she is also a trained bodyguard and expert marksman - indispensable to her elderly employer, a courtly gentleman Sarah has come to respect and love. But her perfectly ordered life is shattered when tragedy strikes.
In the grand tradition of Elmore Leonard, Laurence Shames creates an outrageous heavyweight thriller that’s heavy on atmosphere and action. Joey Goldman is a low-level New York hustler. He’s taking a working vacation in South Florida and looking to score big with a time-share scam. His half brother Gino Delgatto is a man in need of a fall guy. When they meet in Key West, the term dysfunctional family takes on a new meaning. Will one of them succeed? Or will the Miami mob find an eye-popping way to dispose of them both?
The bodies of four men have been discovered in the town of Bradfield. Enlisted to investigate is criminal psychologist Tony Hill. Even for a seasoned professional, the series of mutilation sex murders is unlike anything he's encountered before. But profiling the psychopath is not beyond him. Hill's own past has made him the perfect man to comprehend the killer's motives. It's also made him the perfect victim. A game has begun for the hunter and the hunted.
There isn't much fun in the sun when a billionaire real estate tycoon is found murdered on the Tilt-a-Whirl at a seedy seaside amusement park in the otherwise quiet summer tourist town of Sea Haven. John Ceepak, a former MP just back from Iraq, has just joined the Sea Haven police department. The job offer came from an old Army buddy who hoped to give Ceepak at least a summer's worth of rest and relaxation to help him forget the horrors of war. Instead, Ceepak will head up the murder investigation.
Carl Hiassen can rest easy now that Tim Dorsey has taken up the mantle of nuttiest Florida Novelist-- and I mean that in a good way. If you could ever cram the Marx brothers into a narrative, this would be it. Our hero Serge is at his sanest in this eighth foray into the weird world of a remarkably lovable serial killer (his victims are the kind of people most of us would like to strangle). Or he just seems saner this time because he is visiting Hollywood, where he blends well with the local sharks and wackos. I laughed out loud. Great narration. If you like this one, Audible has double-strength Serge in many more novels with no fall-off in quality.
7 of 7 people found this review helpful
OMG! This is terrific. Narrator, George Wilson is the BEST! I sometimes listen to my books at work and it's so hard to sit there and not laugh out loud! And.. with so many of Tim Dorsey's books there are lots of thought provoking moments! ;-) I listen to them as soon as they come out! This one is excellent!
3 of 3 people found this review helpful
I'm a fairly recent convert to the insanely magnificent Serge Storms and his permanently wasted sidekick. This time they turn their sights on Hollywood and all hell breaks out. The Serge books are unusual in that you can pretty much take any chapter in any order and find something funny or fascinating without actually understanding the plot. That's perhaps just as well as in some cases (and this is one of them) the plot is so convoluted (and a bit ragged) that actually figuring out what's going on is a challenge. There are still some parts of the plot that I didn't quite follow it's not Shakespeare; I don't really have an excuse, but I have no idea how one of the key characters landed a part as a real Hollywood star in a large movie apparently just to facilitate the twist in the tail. In the end it doesn't really matter, this is a wonderfully acidic take on movies and, as always, more tightly packed with fun and facts than a Peter Jackson premier with an open bar.
2 of 2 people found this review helpful
Hilarious! The ransom note and phone call alone would justify the buy. Great narration by George Wilson.
5 of 6 people found this review helpful
Serge Storms, Tim Dorsey's off-the-spectrum Florida psychopath, takes on Hollywood in the eighth entry in his series, with sidekick Coleman still at his side contributing strung-out non sequiturs. If you're a fan of Serge and Dorsey, this may not be his best, but it is still good fun, especially in audio format with George Wilson doing justice as usual to Serge's rants.
The good news with Serge going to Hollywood is the non-stop stream of movie references, much of it familiar to casual moviegoers, some that only hardocre cinephiles will get. He chooses where he wants to be based on movie locations, what he wants to say based on movies quotes, what he wants to do -- including his elaborate murder schemes -- based on what he has seen in movies.
The not so good news is that Serge's rants are fewer and shorter than usual. The best thing about this series is when Serge takes off on rhetorical benders, non-stop torrents of verbal diarrhea that rarely fail to amuse (and even, hidden among the craziness, educate, at least in the sense of learning trivia). Coleman too seems off his game, lending fewer and shorter interjections that are even more irrelevant than usual.
The Hollywood characters Serge skewers are right out of central casting. Probably just what Dorsey wanted in order to satirize them. But nothing new. Would have been nice for them to have deeper back stories and less stereotypical words and deeds. And how it all comes together in the end is rushed, and more contrived than it needs to be.
But I'm just being nitpicky -- this is still a whole lot of fun, and funny, perfect for fans of Serge and Dorsey, probably a good read/listen as well for anyone unfamiliar with them, not going as far over the top as usual. And you certainly don't need to worry about jumping into a long series in the middle -- any connection to previous entries is not requisite for reading this one.
1 of 1 people found this review helpful
Where does The Big Bamboo rank among all the audiobooks you’ve listened to so far?
As always I enjoyed another Tim Dorsey book. The stories are interesting. I'm always laughing out loud while listening. My husband and I listen on our snowbird trips to Florida and traveling around Florida so we missed the Florida backdrop a little bit.
Have you listened to any of George Wilson’s other performances before? How does this one compare?
His performances greatly enhance the books. His voices are perfect. I love knowing exactly when Serge is talking or rambling, not like it's that hard to tell after a few words though.
1 of 1 people found this review helpful
I was so happy to see Serge back especially in audio form I listened to it at work and laughed so hard at Serge and Collmans antics that people thought I was crazy. Non stop laughter and craizieness.
1 of 1 people found this review helpful
I've been plugging away hoping and hoping, as in a bad movie, the story will finally gel and grip me....
I do not understand what is going on and think it may have been decipherable
in print...
Still slogging away, making it a real challenge to follow on daily walks.
Can't wait to finish or maybe just give up and gone on to the next novel!
2 of 3 people found this review helpful
you got to love Serg and Coleman this series is the best it is very funny the book is very entertaining love it
2 of 3 people found this review helpful
Another in a series of great books by on of the best authors out there. Serge and Coleman kept me in stitches as Tim showed us the true nature of the entertainment (movie) industry. This was an awesome book.
2 of 3 people found this review helpful
West coast story taking the lid of film land, More Tim D magic that makes me laugh out loud with my MP3 player