Author Tim Dorsey finds fodder in Florida’s tropical setting, unusual news

Tim Dorsey doubts he'll ever write a book based in Las Vegas.

It's not that he hasn't thought about it, and it's not that he's not fond of our little oasis in the desert. It's just that he's a devoted fan of Hunter S. Thompson, to the point where he stayed at Circus Circus on a visit some years ago even though the book convention he was attending was at another hotel.

"I'm just too intimidated," said Dorsey, who will make an appearance Monday at the Clark County Library, "because he has one of the greatest books of all time set in Vegas."

Besides, the not-born-but-raised Floridian finds plenty to write about in his home state.

"First, it's visually intoxicating," he said. "There couldn't be a more beautiful place if you're a writer or are an artist of any kind. And I grew up there, so I have a lot of nostalgic feeling for it."

Not so much, though, that he doesn't find plenty to mine in the fertile ground of Florida weirdness.

"It gives me an embarrassing wealth of fodder," he said. "It's never boring, and it never stops. If you just read the newspapers every day, you see all these people doing weird things. They found that grand piano on the sandbar in Biscayne Bay," in Miami, last year. "As soon as I saw it, I thought of Salvador Dali. It turned out to be an aspiring art student."

Dorsey is the author of 15 crime capers starring the multifaceted and extremely complex Serge A. Storms (a takeoff, as every tropical dweller would recognize, on ever-worrisome storm surges) and writes in a style reminiscent of Carl Hiassen and John D. MacDonald.

In his latest, "Pineapple Grenade," Serge has decided to become a spy and makes the rounds of Miami's foreign consulates as a means to that end. And then there's the Hollow Man, a corpse whose organs have been removed without any visible trauma to his body.

Dorsey's Las Vegas visit is part of a 60-stop tour. He remembers his last trip to the city, about six years ago.

"It was so cool, because usually, if you're doing a book event in any other city, you'll just go into the restroom before and comb your hair," Dorsey said. "They said, 'Here's your dressing room.' There was a mirror with cabaret lightbulbs. I was just tickled: 'This is so cool. I've made Vegas; I'm playing Vegas.' ''

He didn't, however, stick to the primary tourist magnets.

"I look for the out-of-the-way places, just like I do in the Florida books," Dorsey said. "Instead of going down to the Strip, I used my spare time to visit the Atomic Testing Museum. I walked around and played with the interactive stuff. That was one of the coolest things in Vegas."

His last visit, he said, was timed to a hotel demolition, which he saw on TV and out of his hotel window at the same time.

And he went to the top of the Stratosphere to ride the now-defunct roller coaster, and was rather surprised to see a camcorder in the hand of a fellow passenger.

"I started thinking of a really good plot device," he said. "You don't know if you're going to be able to hang on to stuff" while on a thrill ride. "If that camcorder goes off the Stratosphere and hits somebody in the crowd, it's going to kill them."

He did use it in a book -- "Gator A Go Go," which was also set in Florida.

Oh, well, Las Vegas. Maybe next time.

Contact reporter Heidi Knapp Rinella at hrinella@reviewjournal.com or 702-383-0474.