Genuine Florida

‘Dutch Uncle’ is part of the ‘Hard Case Crime’ series that is reprinting older pulp novels and brand new ones. This is a new one that was first published in 2005 and still available in stores. The locations is primarily in Miami and Fort Lauderdale. Other locations involved are Sunrise, Gainesville and Orlando.

Author Peter Pavia has begun an extremely promising writing career with a top notch read of what most face in South Florida: Various varieties of crime. Pavia does a great job of laying out the various characters and their thought processes. The story then bounces from one to the other each with their own view of various situations in the book. This is very well done. The plot seems to be heading to a cliff,,,and maybe it does and maybe it doesn’t. That makes another interesting turn in the writing: You draw your own conclusion. The way it is all written, you care enough to find out. Well done!

This is a very good book. Not only is it very well researched and footnoted, it’s also very balanced. I’ve noticed a trend of recent non-fiction books of Florida to have a very sharp political slant. Despite writing about the Civil War and the very conroversial land and oyster wheeler-dealer William Lee Popham the author, Willaim Warren Rogers, does and amazing job of being very fair.

Rogers writing of Popham could have leaned to pure camp. What a character! Getting the book to read just about Popham is well worth the price!

After the many, many Florida mysteries I’ve read T.J. MacGregor was one I hadn’t taken in yet. My first of her series is ‘Kill Flash’. ‘Kill Flash’ is second in the P.I. duo series and is very good. Set in the Miami area, this series involves a husband and wife P.I. team. They find themselves trying to solve the deaths of the crew of a movie shooting in the area. The unknown killer picks off one and then another until the conclusion. That’s where the disappointment comes in as the killer holds back to get caught in a rather easy writing device that concludes the story. Still the book is very well written and the interplay among the characters brings you closer to them.

This is a neat set of essays mostly about books and authors that set their stories in Florida. Nifty tidbits of info up to the book being published in 1997. Lots about John D. MacDonald, T.J. MacGregor, Carl Hiassen, Edna Buchanon and the many other mystery writers. This is before Tim Dorsey and Jonathan King.

Here we find Swampy visiting the southeasts largest comic book show, the MegaCon. Swampy is with Phil Boyle (L) and Jim Ivey.

You’re basically looking at the history of the comic book store from past to present. Jim open the first comic book store in Central Florida and one of the first in the South back in the early ’70s in St. Petersburg. Later he moved it to Orlando. Along the way he started one of the first comic book conventions in the South, the OrlandoCon. The OrlandoCon brought in the top named cartoonists from all over to Central Florida once a year. It also brought in collectors and enthusiasts. That included Harris Rosen who helped Jim produce the show by providing the location at the former International Inn (Now a Travel Lodge. The Shogun restaurant is the same.) on International Drive. Once a year a cartoonist was honored with the ‘Ignatz Award’, named after the mouse character in the Krazy Kat comic strip.

It should also be mentioned that Jim’s comic shop start was located where he worked. He was editorial cartoonist for the St. Petersburg Times. After he cartooned at other papers before ending up at The Sentinel Star (Now Orlando Sentinel) as editorial cartoonist. He was also a founding member of the Association of American Editorial Cartoonists and extremely active with the National Cartoonists Society.

Along comes 1983 and the very young Phil Boyle decides to open his own store. He’d been going to Jim’s store and liked what he was doing. With help from family Phil began the Coliseum of Comics on South Orange Blossom Trail snug between some questionable establishments that enticed many a sailor from the Naval Training Center, amongst others. The store changed locations, grew, more stores were added. Now Phil has stores that stretch from Ormond Beach to Tampa. Phil is also the official sponsor of the annual MegaCon. Phil has continued what Jim started and credits Jim for starting on the road to great success. That success is celebrating 25 years this year. For Phil’s store locations and more about Coliseum of Comics click here .

You can catch up with Jim Ivey with his weekly entry in the cartooning blog about the history of cartooning - Strippers Guide  - by clicking here.

I was very glad to find this book a few weeks ago. I had been looking for a book that covered the folks who uprooted themselves from Greece, made the trip across the ocean and the attempts to resettle in Florida. This was a very good recounting of that with plenty of footnotes!

The author (That’s the long Greek name on the cover) does a great job of well covering the exploits of Andrew Turnbull and his gathering of exploitable Greeks and Italians and shipping them to the new Florida land to begin harvesting necessetities for England. The story of Turnbull’s good and then bad relationships with English Florida leaders at the time is well explained. The only part I found lacking was a better explanation of the fall of New Smyrna.

This is another book out-of-print. Check your library.

One of the best books I’ve ever read.

This is the story of Florida pioneers and the taming of a country. Or the attempt to tame. Richard Powell, the author, created this very well researched and thought out novel spanning from 1895 to 1946. The main characters are a train barron, a farmer from Orlando and a fellow raised by the Big Cypress swamps. His knowledge and understanding of our great Florida history and natural landscape shines throughout. His characterizations are consistent and his writing of them and the narrative harkens the best of John D. MacDonald.

I love the cover art. I’m sure Powell had the same trouble as I do with the cover of this paperback from 1964. Florida’s flora and fauna is represented by palm trees and flying flamingos. Obviously the art was created by somebody up north who had not read the book. I know flamingos were wisely omitted and really can’t recall palms being mentioned. Both are myths by land sellers long ago. Sure there are some palms, but few in comparison to the vast expanse of pines and oaks throughout the state. Flamingos were dragged here kicking and screaming over a hundred years ago by promoters and the pink feathered fowls stuck. The only “wild” flamingos in the state were at the now-closed Hialeah race track. The birds had an area to their own and never really wandered from it, but appeared to be free to roam.

Unfortunately, this book is out of print. Check your local library. Well worth paying plenty for.

Overall in may ways. this surpases ‘A Land Remembered’ to me in that it gives some focus to the oncoming urban life and the writing of the Floirda environment is as stunning as the land itself…What’s left that is.

This was a great read! A very well constructed book of the life of Mel Tillis from his birth in Tampa in 1932 to when the book came out in 1984. Lots about growing up in east Hillsborough County and around Pahokee. Fun to learn the poor to middle class Tillis family had a bakery in both locations, too!

One of the neatest stories of Tillis growing up is that while down in Pahokee and entering his teen years, his friends would grab the top of a young pine tree and pull it back. Someone would then sit on the top pulled back. The top of the tree would be let go and the young person would take flight near Lake Okeechobee!

Something else was that at the end of the book he writes that he was attempting to get Richard Powell’s book, ‘I’ll Take This Land’, about Florida pioneers made into a film. I did some simple checking and can’t find any indication a film was made. I hadn’t read Powell’s book yet. I bumped it to the front and let’s see how it stands against ‘A Land Remembered’.

‘Stutterin’ Boy’ is out of print, but worth searching out! I just hope Tillis will write a follow-up from 1984 to present.