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In the late 1980s Tim Dorsey, a young newspaperman at the Tampa Tribune, noticed something remarkable happening to popular literature in Florida. Writing crime novels had suddenly become popular, and readers were buying them. “It was like a switch was thrown,” Dorsey recalled later. And in a twinkling, meaning two or three years, “the Florida author subgenre” was born.

Carl Hiaasen’s debut novel, Tourist Season, was among the first titles. Soon other authors appeared–James W. Hall, Edna Buchanan, Randy Wayne White, and half a dozen more. Dorsey, growing up in Florida, had often wondered about his state’s sense of identity. It was not southern, not northern. “What’s our identity?” He decided the new writers were producing stories about the real Florida and establishing a sense of identity for it, at last.

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For crime writers, Florida is a target-rich environment

When he studied their books he decided that all the branches of this family tree grew from a single trunk, John D. MacDonald, who died in 1986 after writing 21 novels about a charming and funny Floridian named Travis McGee. Confirming his status as fan, Dorsey visited Bahia Mar Marina, Fort Lauderdale, where Travis parked his fictional houseboat and where (in the real world) the marina has kept his boat’s place, Slip F-18, empty in his honour.