Main Characters
- Brian Keyes (32): a former reporter for the Sun , now a private detective.
- Cab Mulcahy : managing editor of the Sun , Keyes's friend and mentor.
- Ricky Bloodworth : wet-behind-the-ears reporter for the Sun . Energetic and ambitious, Bloodworth yearns for success in journalism, but lacks all the other qualities necessary for a good reporter, including sensitivity, tact, and basic writing skills.
- Al García : Detective Sergeant for the Metro-Dade Police Homicide unit.
Al Garcia
Alberto "Al" Garcia is a recurring fictional character in several novels by Carl Hiaasen, beginning with Hiaasen's first, Tourist Season . To date, he has appeared in four of Hiaasen's novels, and often acts as an important ally to the novel's main protagonist.
In the film version of Strip Tease , he was portrayed by Armand Assante.
Personal History
Garcia emigrated from Cuba as a young boy; certain family members stayed behind, including a sister who married a Cuban Army officer. Having arrived in America with virtually nothing, he joined the Metro-Dade County police and eventually became a detective in the Homicide Division. His superiors look on him fondly as "an excellent detective with no ambition to be anything more."
In Tourist Season he investigates several suspicious deaths of tourists, but is initially censured when he suggests that an extremist group is targeting tourists. When the fact becomes impossible to ignore, he is put in charge of a special task force to catch the terrorists. One of the terrorists, Jesus Bernal, trying to raise his own prestige among anti-Castro Cubans in Florida, labels Garcia a "traitor" and kidnaps him at gunpoint. Garcia receives a non-fatal wound to his shoulder from Bernal's shotgun (that continues to bother him in subsequent novels) before Bernal is stopped. He spends the book's climax recovering in the hospital.
Personal life
In Tourist Season he is married, with at least one adult daughter. At the time of Strip Tease , he has remarried, to a woman named Donna (whom he met while arresting her then-husband for a drug-related murder) and become stepfather to her two young children.
Books with Al Garcia
- Tourist Season
- Double Whammy
- Skin Tight
- Strip Tease
Victims
- Theodore Bellamy, shriner
- B.D. "Sparky" Harper, president of the Miami Chamber of Commerce
- Renee LeVoux, tourist from Montreal
- Ida Kimmelman, retiree
- Dr. Remond Courtney, shill psychiatrist
Las Noches de Diciembre
- Skip Wiley (White, 37): A popular columnist for the Sun , leader and founder of Las Noches . Wiley wants to save the Florida environment by scaring tourists out of Florida. Wiley reasons that the entire Florida economy is dependent on tourism and emigration from other parts of America, and that without it the whole state structure will collapse.
- Daniel "Viceroy" Wilson (African-American, 36): formerly a star fullback for the Miami Dolphins football team, Wilson was cut from the team after critically injuring both knees. After several years as a drug addict and a petty criminal, he has cleaned up, educated himself, and dreams of revenge on the white-dominated establishment of Florida.
- Jesús Bernal (Cuban, late 20's): formerly a member of an anti-Castro group (the "First Weekend in July Movement") in Florida seeking to drive Castro from power and let Cuban exiles return home. Jesús was expelled from the movement after one mistake too many. Overflowing with machismo , he thinks of himself as the most experienced and well-trained of Las Noches at committing terrorist acts, but in fact is completely inept at anything except writing snappy press releases (a number of farcical situations in the novel arise from his attempts to plant homemade bombs). His militant politics are also something of a pose, since he was born and raised in New Jersey, graduated from Dartmouth College, and has never been to Cuba in his life.
- Tommy Tigertail (Seminole, mid-20's): A member of the Seminole Nation, and the source of Las Noches funding. Tommy is an innovator, largely responsible for turning white people's fetish for bingo into a multi-million dollar business for his tribe, and is also deeply aggrieved by the white men's actions against his ancestors, and their destruction of Florida's natural beauty.
- Pavlov : a giant American crocodile.
- Jenna : Skip's girlfriend, Brian's ex-girlfriend.
