Sunshine State Secrets: Six Crime Fiction Books Set in Florida
By Erica Wright
The first weekend I lived in Gainesville, I watched a couple ride their tandem bicycle down University Avenue, maneuvering a homemade mechanical shark. No, it wasn’t Halloween—it was Florida. From invasive pythons in the Everglades to the rocket launches at Cape Canaveral, the Sunshine State is certainly unique, and many crime novelists lean into what makes this place special.
In terms of setting, it’s hard to do better than Florida. There’s something particularly shocking about a ghastly murder set against a backdrop of white, sandy beaches and picture-perfect sunsets. For inland locations, you’re as likely to find an alligator-infested swamp as an idyllic small town. And what would the noir tradition be without Miami?
When I decided to set my new mystery novel in Florida, I was nervous. I was no longer living there and worried that I might get important details wrong. In fact, an early reader pointed out—with an eye roll visible through the email—that Florida State University’s colors are garnet and gold, not as I had embarrassingly claimed maroon and gold. In the end, I couldn’t resist the pull of this location, though, where a museum of oddities would fit right in.
So many other crime writers have succumbed to the siren song of Florida, and I’m sharing a few of my favorites here.
Lucky You was published in 1997, a date I double-checked because the villain Bodean Gazzer could have been ripped from today’s headlines. Bodean is a hate-filled conspiracy theorist convinced that his bad luck, including multiple arrests, is due to minorities getting special treatment. His luck changes when he wins a multi-million dollar lottery, but even that good news doesn’t quell his rage. He attacks his co-winner and steals her ticket, prompting JoLayne Lucks to chase him down. In true Hiassen fashion, his dark premise is combined with outlandish escapades and memorable use of setting, in this case a zany Floridan small town and its environs.
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This sweeping gothic thriller begins with a rather lackluster endorsement for its setting: “I cannot for the life of me imagine why anyone would want to live in Florida.” Of course, Anna Barnes arrives in South Florida during the 1910s, aghast to find that her husband has built them a mansion in what feels an awful lot like a swamp despite the panoramic ocean views. Anna worries about alligators, snakes, and the precarious drop to the water that as already claimed one man’s life. Years later, Carmen Acosta is much more hopeful about her new life in Miami, having left Cuba after her father’s death. Her optimism is quickly tested by the grand home on Biscayne Bay and the dangerous secrets that it keeps.
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Lightwood is the first of Steph Post’s Judah Cannon trilogy, a masterclass in Southern noir. After being released from prison, Judah is determined to straighten up and fly right. His crime-happy family has other ideas and soon ropes him into a robbery. As if angering a local biker gang isn’t bad enough, that gang is also in cahoots with an unhinged Pentecostal preacher named Sister Tulah. When she’s not handling snakes or drinking poison, she’s building a crime empire. Post uses her Central Florida backdrop to great affect, the heat radiating off her carefully plotted pages.
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Fans of down-on-their-luck PIs can do no better than Pete Fernandez. Silent City, the first in Alex Segura’s critically acclaimed series, finds Pete in pretty dire straights, mostly of his own creation. A missing person’s case pulls him back from the brink of self-destruction only to be thrown into the path of a vicious killer. One of the delights of this series is watching Pete evolve from an unlikely PI into a bonafide hero. Also a delight is the way Segura leans into the noir vibes of Miami.
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If you prefer your crime novels to focus on the committing rather than the solving, Elmore Leonard’s classic Rum Punchis for you. It’s quintessential Leonard with spare, razor-sharp prose and unforgettable characters. Everybody’s got a hustle in this version of West Palm Beach. Rum Punch is the second book in the Ordell Robbie and Louis Gara series, but it’s no wonder that Quentin Tarantino chose to call his movie adaptation Jackie Brown after the novel’s Jackie Burke, a formidable flight attendant determined to do more than dodge a bullet.
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A lot of Florida crime fiction is seriously dark in contrast with the sunny skies above the characters’ heads. If you’re looking for something lighter, Elaine Viets’s Dead-End Job Mystery Series introduces a plucky heroine running from her past. What better place to hide than Fort Lauderdale? That is, it’s a great place to hide until Helen notices her boss skimming money, dealing drugs, and eventually ending up dead. I am a fan of the way Viets explores the theme of haves versus have-nots, a contrast nowhere more obvious than in South Florida.
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Rational and cynical Aly Orlean’s life in her psychic hometown of Wyndale, Florida couldn’t be more hectic. It’s all about running her business, raising a teenage sister, sending out holiday greetings–and her new task: finding a killer.
For her Museum of Unusual Occurrence not only houses odd curiosities but now has a brand-new display: The body of Rose Dempsey, a local twenty-year-old, set up in one of the exhibits as if she has been ritually sacrificed.
With the police clueless, Aly is worried that this is a vicious warning for her and her solitary way of life. Fearing for her sister Merope’s well-being, she’s determined to find out why the killer murdered Rose and how her body was placed in Aly’s museum . . . But might the killer be someone hiding in plain sight?
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