Tim Dorsey, author of 26 popular novels about a unique Florida Man named Serge Storms, has died at age 62. ...Dorsey took his first breaths in Carmel, Indiana, a suburb north of Indianapolis, on January 25, 1961. The Times says “his family moved to Florida when he was a baby, and he grew up in Riviera Beach. After graduating from Auburn University, he worked as a reporter at The Alabama Journal, then joined the Tampa Tribune staff in 1987.”
Randy Wayne White, a friend and fellow Florida author (of the Doc Ford novels and other books), said by phone Tuesday, “When he started writing a series about an insane serial killer, I thought, how long can that bulls—t go on?
“But he wrote about every nook and cranny of Florida. He colonized it. That will last. He was not a haphazard researcher; he was a field historian. Plus the books are freaking hilarious,” White said. “Humor plus history—that’s a winning combination.”
He resigned from the latter newspaper in 1999 to become a full-time writer, turning out his first novel, a black comedy titled Florida Roadkill, in that same year. As with so many of Dorsey’s books, it starred “intelligent but sociopathic criminal” Serge A. Storms, a character the author had conceived of originally as the sort of villain who might appear in a James Bond adventure, but who soon became his series protagonist. Dorsey went on to pen 25 more Storms yarns, including The Maltese Iguana, which was released last February.
The Times notes that Dorsey “had recently had health problems,” but fails to specify exactly what they were. He died at his home in Islamorada, in the Florida Keys.
(Hat tip to Lesa’s Book Critiques.)
READ MORE: “Novelist Tim Dorsey, Who Mixed Comedy and Murder in His Serge A. Storms Stories, Dies at 62,” by Mark Kennedy (Associated Press); “Tim Dorsey, Who Turned Florida’s Quirks Into Comic Gold, Dies at 62,” by Clay Risen (The New York Times).
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