Nuclear Jellyfish
Tim Dorsey
Serge Storms 11
William Morrow

Nuclear Jellyfish is the eleventh Serge Storms comic mystery by Tim Dorsey. It is also one you can skip unless you are a hardcore Tim Dorsey fan. Nuclear Jellyfish follows the usual over-the-top mayhem and bizarre murders at the hands of Serge Storms. However, even for a mystery writer whose plot lines are looser than a five dollar hooker, the eleventh book makes little sense and is harder to follow than a hummingbird on cocaine-laced sugar water. Kindle version: Nuclear Jellyfish: A Novel (Serge Storms series Book 11)

The loose, very loose plot of Nuclear Jellyfish has Serge Storms going around Florida looking for some kind of employment. He figures creating his own travel advisory website is a good idea. He also gets paid for filling-in hotel evaluation cards and the like but his evaluations are so bizarre he never gets the money.

Serge stumbles upon a convention of coin dealers and figures out the coin dealers moonlight as diamond couriers. Unfortunately, the courriers all get mugged. Serge and his ever faithful companion Coleman investigate. They are accompanied by a stripper named Story whose brother was one of the mugged courriers.

Detective Mahoney, forever on Storm’s trail is out to protect him this time around as he has heard there is a contract out on him.

Though this comic mystery features the usual Tim Dorsey touches of bizarre murder methods, including one involving those timed room deodorizers and hardening liquid insulation and the Florida ephemera that makes a Serge Storms novel what it is, even Dorsey gets lost three-quarters into his story and has to backtrack to get moving again.

I would certainly not use Nuclear Jellyfish to introduce someone to Tim Dorsey or his most creative psychotic killer slash justice dispenser Serge Storms. Orange Crush would be a better bet.

If you are a Tim Dorsey fan, you should look into other Florida weird mystery writers like Carl Hiaasen and Laurence Shames


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