Orange Crush is Tim Dorsey's third novel, and the first not to star Serge A. Storms as the main character. It is a frequently dark spoof of the politics of Florida and the United States' involvement in the Balkans.
Tim Dorsey is an American novelist. He is known for a series starring Serge A. Storms, a mentally disturbed vigilante antihero who rampages across Florida enforcing his own moral code against a variety of low-life criminals.
Serge A. Storms is the main fictional character in most of Tim Dorsey's novels. His name is a pun on storm surge. Most often described as "intense" in personality, he is a vagrant with a voracious intellect and an encyclopedic knowledge of Florida history, but prone to periods of "focus" that lead him to commit brutal - and often elaborately planned and staged - acts of violence.
Florida is the southernmost contiguous state in the United States. The state is bordered to the west by the Gulf of Mexico, to the northwest by Alabama, to the north by Georgia, to the east by the Atlantic Ocean, and to the south by the Straits of Florida. Florida is the 22nd-most extensive, the 3rd-most populous, and the 8th-most densely populated of the U.S. states. Jacksonville is the most populous municipality in the state and the largest city by area in the contiguous United States. The Miami metropolitan area is Florida's most populous urban area. Tallahassee is the state's capital.
Explanation of the title
The "Orange Crush" is the name given to the second-hand motorhome purchased by the main character, since it is painted bright orange and was previously used in a short-lived advertising campaign for the soft drink.
A motorhome is a type of self-propelled recreational vehicle (RV) which offers living accommodation combined with a vehicle engine.
Plot summary
Marlon Conrad, a "spoiled rich kid", enters the political arena in a career carefully managed by his wealthy father. He becomes the lieutenant governor of Florida, a plush job he can exploit mercilessly. When the elected governor dies in a plane crash, Marlon automatically assumes the office. At the outset of his tenure, Marlon is apathetic and corrupt, riding in the pockets of special interest groups. However, he is suddenly recruited into active duty during the Kosovo War and a bureaucratic tangle prevents him from ducking his responsibility as expected. His experiences in the military change his outlook, his fundamental character, and even his political views. He returns to Florida, determined to make a difference in the state. But first, Marlon faces a reelection battle against dim-witted Democratic candidate Gomer Tatum, the state House Speaker.
The Kosovo War was an armed conflict in Kosovo that started in late February 1998 and lasted until 11 June 1999. It was fought by the forces of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, which controlled Kosovo before the war, and the Kosovo Albanian rebel group known as the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA), with air support from the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) from 24 March 1999, and ground support from the Albanian army.
Alternating between manic attentiveness to his official duties and depressed apathy, Marlon eventually becomes disgusted with the inertia of politics in Tallahassee and purchases a second-hand motorhome. Marlon's Chief of Staff, Gottfried Escrow, converts Marlon's road trip into an impromptu campaign tour. Hijinks ensue as Tatum, egged on by his hyper-ambitious fiancee, Jackie, follows Marlon's trail around Florida, doing their best to outshine or sabotage Marlon's popularity.
A road trip, sometimes spelled roadtrip, is a long distance journey on the road. Typically, road trips are long distances traveled by automobile.
Along the way, Escrow is alarmed to discover that Marlon's Press Secretary, Jack Pimento, is actually notorious criminal Serge A. Storms, suffering from amnesia; Escrow tries various schemes to have Serge arrested or removed from the campaign without risking public exposure. At the same time, Detective Mahoney, an agent of the FDLE, becomes obsessed with capturing Serge.
Amnesia is a deficit in memory caused by brain damage or disease, but it can also be caused temporarily by the use of various sedatives and hypnotic drugs. The memory can be either wholly or partially lost due to the extent of damage that was caused. There are two main types of amnesia: retrograde amnesia and anterograde amnesia. Retrograde amnesia is the inability to retrieve information that was acquired before a particular date, usually the date of an accident or operation. In some cases the memory loss can extend back decades, while in others the person may lose only a few months of memory. Anterograde amnesia is the inability to transfer new information from the short-term store into the long-term store. People with this type of amnesia cannot remember things for long periods of time. These two types are not mutually exclusive; both can occur simultaneously.
The Florida Department of Law Enforcement (FDLE) is a state-wide investigative law enforcement agency within the state of Florida. The department formally coordinates eight boards, councils, and commissions. FDLE's duties, responsibilities and procedures are mandated through Chapter 943, Florida Statutes, and Chapter 11, Florida Administrative Code. FDLE is headed by a commissioner who reports to Florida Cabinet which is composed of the Governor, the Attorney General, the Chief Financial Officer and the Commissioner of Agriculture. The Commissioner is appointed to his position by the Governor and Cabinet and confirmed by the Florida Senate.
Marlon's newfound candor and lack of fealty to Florida's "fat cats" leads to several attempts to assassinate him, several of which are stopped by Jack/Serge. His change of heart also wins over Elizabeth Sinclair, a former aide at the public relations firm owned by Marlon's father's best friend. She and Marlon fall in love, and a potentially messy break-up with Marlon's fiancee, Babs Belvedere, is averted when she ends up falling for Jack/Serge instead.
Fat cat is a political term originally describing a rich political donor, also called an angel or big money man.
Public relations (PR) is the practice of deliberately managing the spread of information between an individual or an organization and the public. Public relations may include an organization or individual gaining exposure to their audiences using topics of public interest and news items that do not require direct payment. This differentiates it from advertising as a form of marketing communications. Public relations is the idea of creating coverage for clients for free, rather than marketing or advertising. But now, advertising is also a part of greater PR Activities. An example of good public relations would be generating an article featuring a client, rather than paying for the client to be advertised next to the article. The aim of public relations is to inform the public, prospective customers, investors, partners, employees, and other stakeholders and ultimately persuade them to maintain a positive or favorable view about the organization, its leadership, products, or political decisions. Public relations professionals typically work for PR and marketing firms, businesses and companies, government, and public officials as PIOs and nongovernmental organizations, and nonprofit organizations. Jobs central to public relations include account coordinator, account executive, account supervisor, and media relations manager.
On election night, Serge regains his memory and tackles Marlon's last would-be assassin, a young Latin American woman who escaped to the U.S. and found the men who had gang-raped and tortured her living well in South Florida under false identities supplied by the CIA (one of several callous acts that Marlon rubber stamped before his reformation). Serge convinces her to direct her wrath at Frank Lloyd Sirocco, a convicted murderer scheduled for execution who faked evidence of his innocence, won a last-minute exoneration from Marlon, then called to rub his guilt in the governor's face.
Marlon loses the election to Tatum by a slim margin, and concedes defeat, departing Tallahassee with Elizabeth. Escrow's efforts on Marlon's behalf end with Escrow being arrested with illicit heroin and bags full of stolen ballots. In the epilogue, Marlon and Elizabeth marry, and continue to tour the country in the motorhome, holding jobs as guest political commentators on CNN; a few months later, a documentary on the campaign wins Best Documentary at the Academy Awards; watching the ceremony on television, Detective Mahoney sees Serge mount the stage to accept the award, and takes off after him once more.
The Stingray Shuffle is Tim Dorsey's fifth novel, published in 2003.
Thomas LeRoy Collins was an American attorney and politician who served as the 33rd Governor of Florida. Collins began his governorship after winning a special election in 1954, was elected to a four-year term in 1956, and served from 1955 to 1961. Prior to winning election as governor, Collins served several terms in the Florida House of Representatives and Senate. He was the first governor from the South to promote the moral necessity of ending segregation. Counseling "progress under law", he took a moderate course in favor of incremental improvements during the 1950s and 60s and is remembered as a voice in favor of civil rights.
Cecil Farris Bryant was the 34th Governor of Florida. He also served on the United States National Security Council and in the Office of Emergency Planning during the administration of President Lyndon B. Johnson.
Scott Charles Maddox is an American politician. He was the mayor of Tallahassee, Florida, from 1995 to 1996 and from 1997 to 2003. Maddox is the former chair of the Florida Democratic Party and a former Tallahassee City Commissioner, serving from 1993 to 1995, 1996 to 1997 and from 2012 to 2018.
Antoinette Jennings is an American politician who was the 16th Lieutenant Governor of Florida. She was nominated to the office by Governor Jeb Bush in February 2003 to replace Frank Brogan, who resigned to become president of Florida Atlantic University. She was sworn in on March 3, 2003, becoming the first woman to hold the office. She declined to run for governor in 2006 even though she was reputed to be Bush's preferred choice as his successor.
The history of Tallahassee, like the history of Leon County, begins with the Native American population and its interaction with British and Spanish colonists as well as colonial Americans and fugitive slaves, as the Florida Territory moved toward statehood. Growing numbers of cotton plantations increased the settlement's population greatly. It became a city and capital in 1821.
Hurricane Punch is a novel by Tim Dorsey published in 2007. It follows overly zealous serial killer Serge A. Storms, who is tracking hurricanes all over Florida.
Charles Kenzie Steele was a preacher and a civil rights activist. He was one of the main organizers of the 1956 Tallahassee bus boycott, and a prominent member of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference. On March 23, 2018, Florida Governor Rick Scott signed CS/SB 382 into law, designating portions of Florida State Road 371 and Florida State Road 373 along Orange Avenue in Tallahassee as C.K. Steele Memorial Highway.
Andrew Demese Gillum is an American politician who served as the 126th Mayor of Tallahassee from 2014 to 2018. A member of the Democratic Party, he was its nominee for Governor of Florida in the 2018 election. He previously was a Tallahassee City Commissioner from 2003 until 2014, first elected at the age of 23.
William Cato "Bill" Cramer Sr., was an American attorney and Republican politician, elected in 1954 as a member of the United States House of Representatives from St. Petersburg, Florida. He was the first Florida Republican elected to Congress since 1880, shortly after the end of Reconstruction. He was re-elected, serving without interruption until 1970.
Bill Proctor is the Leon County, Florida District 1 County Commissioner, a role in which he has served since 1996. He has also been an Instructor Political Science at Florida A&M University in Tallahassee, Florida since August 2000.
Anno Dracula is a 1992 novel by British writer Kim Newman, the first in the Anno Dracula series. It is an alternate history using 19th-century English historical settings and personalities, along with characters from popular fiction. The interplay between humans who have chosen to "turn" into vampires and those who are "warm" (humans) is the backdrop for the plot which tracks Jack the Ripper's politically charged destruction of vampire prostitutes. The reader is alternately and sympathetically introduced to various points of view. The main characters are Jack the Ripper, and his hunters Charles Beauregard, and Geneviève Dieudonné, an elder vampire. The two other main point of views are Captain Kostaki, a sympathetic elder vampire warrior of Dracula's Carpathian Guard, and Lord Godalming, ambitious, scheming aide of Prime Minister Ruthven.
Edmund Cottle Weeks was an American politician who served as the third Lieutenant Governor of Florida.
Nuclear Jellyfish is the eleventh novel by American author Tim Dorsey. It was released January 25, 2009.
The 2018 Florida gubernatorial election was held on November 6, 2018, to elect the next governor of Florida, alongside an election to the U.S. Senate, elections to the U.S. House of Representatives and other state and local elections. Incumbent two-term Republican governor Rick Scott was term-limited and could not run for a third term.
Philip Louis Levine is an American businessman and politician who served as Mayor of Miami Beach from 2013 to 2017. A member of the Democratic Party, he was a candidate in the 2018 Florida gubernatorial election.
The Territory of Florida was created in 1822, and Tallahassee was established as the capital city by the Legislative Council of the Territory of Florida in March 1824. Also in 1824, federal officials ordered Native Americans in the area to a reservation; they were Creek and Seminole. Some took refuge to the south in the Everglades and successfully resisted removal, through the Seminole Wars.
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