In February I went to the beginning of Carl Hiaasen’s career, where he teamed up with Bill Montalbano to write three books — Powder Burn, Trap Line, and A Death In China.
I don’t know why it’s called the Black Lizard Trilogy. Each book is a separate, individual story. The closest thing to a black lizard is when a black snake makes an appearance in A Death In China.
The first two books are definitely Florida books. Powder Burn focuses on an architect who gets in the crosshairs by a crazed, drug-world hitman and the only way out is for the architect to dive into the drug world to figure out how to survive. Trap Line focuses on a Key West fishing captain that gets strong-armed into running drugs.
A Death In China is way different. It isn’t a Florida book. Weird. The main action takes place in China, and Tampa makes a brief appearance about 3/4 of the way through the book, other than that there isn’t much Florida here.
The striking difference in these books, compared to what most people think of when it comes to Carl Hiaasen novels, is that these books don’t feature his signature crazed, humorous characters. For the most part, these are straight up crime novels. It’s interesting to see that this was how Hiaasen started.
Anyway, this puts me at 8 for the amount of Hiaasen books I have read. My goal is to read them all–as long as they continue to entertain, that is. I’m currently working on Bad Monkey. So you’ll probably see that in next month’s book report. Not sure what I’ll tackle after that. I’m also hoping to be able to report I’ve read 4 books next month. We will see.
