Florida Man - Mike Baron

Mike Baron was one of the top comic book scripters for many years and these days is a very popular, critically acclaimed mystery and horror novelist. His latest book, FLORIDA MAN, is a bit of a departure. There’s crime in it, but it’s not really a crime novel. It’s more a wild, fast-paced comedy that manages to be dark, profane (it even says so right on the cover), very well-written, and very funny.

The title character is Gary Duba, a perpetually down on his luck Florida redneck who lives up to all the stereotypes, right down to the trailer house in which he lives (held down by giant chains called House Suspenders by Gary, who believes he’s invented the perfect hurricane protection system). Needing money to bail out his girlfriend, who’s gotten arrested for fighting with a Waffle House manager, he sets out to sell one of his prized baseball cards, and when that doesn’t work, he takes on some work for a sleazy attorney that makes him an unofficial private detective. (This isn’t a private eye novel, either.)

Of course things go wrong, and Gary runs into a multitude of characters who are just as colorful and eccentric as he is, and wild adventures pile up . . . until the plot takes an abrupt turn that would seem to indicate Gary’s luck has finally changed for the better. Some things never change, though, including Gary’s devil-may-care approach to life.

FLORIDA MAN is filled with sex, drugs, violence, politically incorrect humor, and gators. The best way to describe it is this: FLORIDA MAN is a hoot. I had a great time reading it and give it a high recommendation.

Whack Job - Mike Baron

Mike Baron is another author whose work I read first in comic books, but he's a fine novelist as well. I'd previously read and enjoyed his horror novel HELMET HEAD. WHACK JOB is an action/adventure thriller (or at least it starts out that way) and is equally entertaining.

This novel opens with a top-secret black ops mission to Libya several years ago that finds American agents infiltrating a desert palace to assassinate Moammar Gaddafi. Things don't go as planned, however, and Otto White is apparently the only survivor from the botched mission. While he was in the palace he witnessed a bizarre phenomenon, the spontaneous combustion of one of Gaddafi's sons, but no one believes him. A pariah in the intelligence community, Otto winds up living in isolation on a Colorado mountaintop.

Until a wave of spontaneous human combustion begins to kill off world leaders and important financial figures, and then Otto is recruited to head up the investigation. Naturally, he uncovers ties to what happened back in Libya, but after that the investigation gets weirder and weirder and takes him to places he never expected to go—literally.

Otto White and his German Shepherd dog Steve are about as likable a pair of protagonists as you're likely to find. Otto is damaged but tough and determined to get to the bottom of the mystery, no matter where it leads him. Baron keeps things moving along at a nice pace, all the way to an offbeat but satisfying conclusion. If you enjoy thrillers where nothing is what it seems and things don't turn out like you'd expect, then WHACK JOB gets a high recommendation from me.

Helmet Head - Mike Baron

I don't read many horror novels, but I enjoy a good one now and then, and Mike Baron's HELMET HEAD certainly falls into that category. I've read many a good comic book written by Baron, but this is the first novel of his that I've read.

If you want action, you'll definitely find it in this yarn about a cop and a motorcycle gang joining forces to battle a demon biker with a big-ass sword who's been murdering people on the rural roads of southern Illinois for years. Helmet Head is considered to be a legend among bikers, but the characters in this book discover that he's all too real.

As in all good books, though, not everything is as it first seems. There's more to Helmet Head, the character, than you might think, and the story goes in directions I didn't expect at all. Not only that, while most of the action takes place over the course of a few hours, Baron also delves into the back-stories of his characters and makes them real. This is one of those books where you don't know who's going to live and who's going to die, and if you try to guess you'll stand a good chance of being wrong. That creates a lot of suspense and makes for an effective ending.

HELMET HEAD is, as they say, not for the squeamish, but it's fast, well-written, and very entertaining. If you like horror fiction with a lot of action, you should definitely check it out.