Tear Jerker / Carl Hiaasen

• Tourist Season ends with Skip Wiley, eco-terrorist mastermind, stuck on an island and surrounded by dynamite, frantically attempting to cajole an eagle to fly to safety, with the blasting soon to start. Also from that book:
  • Brian having to tell Mrs. Bellamy that her husband was murdered;
  • Benevolent Boss Cab Mulcahy's implied disgrace as a result of the story's fallout;
  • The terrified final moments of murder victim Renee LeVoux.
• Ott, a humorous character and good friend of the protagonist, being murdered in Double Whammy.
  • Also, Skink's reaction to seeing the lake filled with dying fish and his own prized one in danger.
• The briefly touched-upon trauma felt by murder victim Vicky's parents and boyfriend in Skin Tight, with her boyfriend blaming himself due to (correctly) wondering if she might have been getting plastic surgery for his benefit when she disappeared.
• Jerry Killian's murder in Strip Tease in a No Good Deed Goes Unpunished fashion. The guy wasn't perfect, but he did leave behind children, and he'd been trying to help Erin.
• In Stormy Weather while the death of Ira Jackson's mother (violent thug that he is) and the loss of Levon Stichler's wife's ashes do get some gravity to them, despite being the instigating events for more humorous events that follow.
  • Also in Stormy Weather, the assault on Brenda and the theft of her mother's wedding ring, which trigger Skink's Roaring Rampage of Revenge.
• In Sick Puppy the murder of Dr. Brinkman a decent man, horrified by his employer's scheme, and who'd provided some help and friendship to the main characters.
• The lyrics of the Warren Zevon song "Basket Case," quoted in full at the end of the novel of the same name. Considering the book came out in 2002 and Zevon died in 2003, it comes across as Hiaasen giving his friend a send-off.
  • The death of rock star Jimmy Stoma in that novel also gets some gravitas as people who cared about him appear and the circumstances behind his death become clear.
• Star Island gives a Dropped a Bridge on Him mention of a past recurring character Brenda Tile, who's said to have recently passed away.
• Bad Monkey's Rosa Campesino has two notably sad autopsies: that of an eight-year-old girl who drowned in the family pool —doubled over in the shallow end from the pain of a burst appendix — while her parents were at a casino; and that of an eleven-year-old boy run over by the school bus. Neither autopsy is central to the plot, but both emphasize the effect that working as a coroner in South Florida can have on a person.
• In Razor Girl: the break-up of Yancy and Rosa's romance. It was heavily foreshadowed, but still disheartening.
• A lot of what Diego Beltran goes through in Squeeze Me.
• Quite a bit from the Darker and Edgier books Hiaasen wrote with Bill Montalbano at the beginning of his career.
  • The main character's daughters death before the book, and his concern when his son is injured.
  • A girl in a coma with a grieving, concerned mother being taken off life support to remove a threat against the local Amoral Attorney whose afraid it will be revealed he gave her the drugs to put her in the coma.
  • In Powder Burn the main character seeing his old girlfriend and her daughter (who might be his) run down in the aftermath of a mob hit minutes after meeting them again.
  • The funeral of the Big Bad in Powder Burn. Yes, he had it coming, but his old friends, who fought against Castro with him and considered themselves True Companions (and have have been his moralityPet's), have no idea about his crimes and are deeply saddened by what happened.
  • The description of the village firefight (both over the other soldiers killed and the armed civilians they were forced to kill) from A Death in China.
  • The Cain and Abel resolution to David Wang going to help his brother.