People come to Florida in droves for the beaches and warm weather. But the sunshine state also attracts its fair share of shady characters, in real life and in fiction.
In the opening scene of the 1995 crime caper, ‘Get Shorty,' you see John Travolta’s character, Chili Palmer, a Miami mobster, griping about a rare spell of cold weather on Miami Beach.
That movie was adapted from Elmore Leonard’s novel of the same name. Leonard is just one of a legion of writers dipping into Florida for inspiration for characters and settings from the criminal underworld.
There’s even a genre of crime fiction set in the Sunshine State – Florida Noir.
And even if you haven’t read them, you’ve probably heard of homegrown practitioners of Florida Noir like Carl Hiassen, the late Tampa resident, Tim Dorsey or Randy Wayne White.
On this episode of Florida Matters, we speak to three people with different perspectives on Florida Noir:
Colette Bancroft is the recently retired book editor at the Tampa Bay Times. For years, she led the Times’ annual “Festival of Reading.” She’s also the editor of Tampa Bay Noir, a collection of short stories that reveal the dark side of sunny Tampa Bay.
John Brandon is the author of five novels. He grew up in Tampa Bay, and his latest, Penalties of June, is set in Tampa.
And Andrew F. Gulli is the editor of “The Strand Magazine” - a quarterly magazine dedicated to short fiction. A recent edition featured a previously unpublished story by famed Florida crime writer John D. MacDonald.
Tampa Bay Noir
According to Colette Bancroft, there's a special element to noir stories that makes them stand out from crime fiction.
“What makes a story noir, rather than just crime fiction, in a noir story, bad people do bad things and they get away with it,” Bancroft said.
She said that although not all Florida Noir stories have it, most have an element of mystery to them.
Bancroft won the Mystery Writers of America’s Robert L. Fish Memorial Award for “Best First Published Short Story” for her piece called “The Bite.”
A few paragraphs from the story are as follows:
“These days, it has some sunny, upscale name, focus-grouped by developers. But when I was a kid there, the neighborhood was called Rattlesnake.
Back in the 1930s, some guy opened a rattlesnake canning plant off Westshore Boulevard, near the Gandy bridge. The Suburbs hadn't sprouted there yet; the land stretching south towards Port Tampa was a couple of miles of pine and palmetto scrub with a hem of mangroves along Tampa Bay, perfect habitat for the plant's product.
Locals caught the snakes by the bagful, pygmy rattlers and big diamondbacks, and sold them to the plant to be skinned and cooked. Around the South, roadside gift shops sold the cans labeled with an illustration of a coiled snake with its fangs bared over the slogan, ‘tastes like chicken!’ It doesn't.”
Although not an autobiographical story, it was one she wrote based on her own upbringing in the Rattlesnake neighborhood.
She explained what makes parts of Florida the perfect backdrop for a shady crime story. For example, in Tampa, Bancroft said that there was organized crime going back to the 20s well into the 90s.
“It was a real center for organized crime. So, there was a lot of presence of the mafia, of people like that,” she said. “And also, because it's such a transitional place. Almost everybody who lives in the Tampa Bay area is from someplace else. They come to Florida to reinvent themselves, and often, it's because they've done something not so great in other places. And if they try to change, they don't necessarily change for the good. So, I think it has those kinds of elements. Some of the reasons that make California such an attractive setting for noir and for crime fiction; Florida has a lot of those same qualities.”
Penalties of June
John Brandon is from Pasco County. His recent book, Penalties of June, puts readers back in a 90s-era Tampa Bay. He reads page 99, providing a vivid description of Pasco County in the 90s:
Pratt sat up straight. Malloy was coming out early, two o'clock, all his stuff with him. Pratt got the LeBaron moving casually, old hat at the route to Heron’s Roost. But when Malloy made a left at the end of the block instead of a right, Pratt had to cut in front of a delivery van to follow someplace other than work, Publix, home. Pratt would take it. He kept his mark in easy site, all the way out blue Cove extension to route 19, the old slow state road that the new expressway would make obsolete. 19 was a grand showplace of decrepit, sleazy strip malls. The traffic thickening as they headed south. A vast red light at intersection every third of a mile. Boat equipment emporiums, all you can eat, buffets. Malloy kept swerving, looking for a stronger current in the river of cars. And Pratt kept him close without leaving the center lane, following him down into Pasco County, past a stream of Catch Penny breakfast places, a half dozen depressing titty bars, a mall that had bottomed into a permanent flea market, Bayonet Point Holiday and North Pinellas. Malloy branched onto alternate 19, a sleepier thoroughfare, and the traffic thinned. They drove past chalky limestone side roads and over short bridges that spanned mucky canals. Pratt stayed two cars back. He knew Malloy was headed to one of Joe baby's places. He could feel it.”
Brandon said the area just seemed like his story should take place there.
“It’s sort of semi-rural, but not really. Definitely not urban, kind of not even suburban, which is how Pasco County is,” he said. “I'd say that's like the cornerstone of that 90’s setting that I grew up in; an endless, endless stretch of strip malls that you just cannot believe that the businesses stay open in them, and somehow, they do.”
Florida Noir authors
There are plenty of Florida Noir authors to choose from, including Jim Thompson, Alex Segura, Lori Roy, who writes about Tampa Bay, and John D. MacDonald.
Andrew Gulli, the editor of The Strand Magazine, said that McDonald wrote many Travis McGee novels. McGee was a private investigator who lived in Florida.
"Travis McGee novels have a message about how corporations are destroying the environment. A lot of it is about how it's good to do the right thing because you can live with yourself, rather than just for a moment. Those are some of the basic themes of John D. McDonald's works,” Gulli explained.
Gulli came across an unpublished MacDonald story at the University of Florida. After working with some librarians, they sent him over the story, and he was really interested in it.
A copy of an unpublished story by MacDonald was then able to appear in a recent edition of The Stand Magazine.
“I read it. I loved the voice. I loved the plot. I loved the twist – [it has] an interesting twist in itself,” he said.
Bancroft said MacDonald is the granddaddy of Florida Noir, having started this kind of crime fiction with a blend of environmentalism.
“Certainly, some of the best-known crime fiction writers in Florida, like Carl Hiaasen and the late Tim Dorsey, have followed in his footsteps in making that kind of concern for Florida's environment and natural beauty, a key component of their stories,” she said. “And I think for people like Carl and Tim, the kind of depredation of the environment, destruction of the environment that we see in Florida in increasing velocity, is a crime. It's sort of the original sin. You know, ‘Florida is so beautiful. Let's go in and love it to death.’ You know, ‘let's go in and ruin all the things that make it beautiful.’ And in John D's books and Carl's books and Tim's books, the people who do that kind of thing, who exploit Florida's natural state, are the worst kind of criminals. And I think that's a kind of dilemma for people who love the state: how do you love it but not love it to death?”
You can hear the entire conversation on the media player above.
