YMMV / Serge Storms

• Alternate Character Interpretation:
  • Rachael, Serge and Coleman's abrasive companion throughout Atomic Lobster, has two aspects to her character with multiple interpretations.
    • Since Rachael spends most of Atomic Lobster high on cocaine, it can be hard to tell whether some of her angry or violent actions throughout the book, such as being eager to throw her old dealer off a bridge or trying to knife Serge and Coleman in the climax shortly after learning about a dark incident in their shared past are a result of cocaine highs or are done consciously.
    • The climax reveals that Rachael is the younger sister of Serge's early victim Sharon Rhodes, and both are cocaine-addicted strippers with poor social skills and little empathy for others. Are their unpleasant traits In the Blood, stemming from a shared Freudian Excuse, or did Rachael turn out like Sharon due to having a case of big sister worship while being too young to understand the negative aspects and impacts of Sharon's lifestyle?
  • In Atomic Lobster, was Serge really intending to let the drug dealer he dangles over a bridge go after a few minutes of "positive reinforcement" before Rachael makes him and Coleman lose their grips? He makes a brief effort to pull the man back up and seemingly abducted him on a whim, without much anger. However, Serge does often lie to his victims about whether they have a chance at survival, rarely bothers to put anyone in danger if he plans to spare them, and has killed people for less than dealing drugs and invading his space.
  • In Nuclear Jellyfish, Howard's mother has a My Beloved Smother relationship with him and he talks about how his dad recently died, while his sister Story recalls being beaten by "her alcoholic mother's boyfriends" before being kicked out of the house, which seems inconsistent with Howard's family life. Are they half-siblings with the same father who grew up in different households? Or is one of Howard's parents a stepparent whom he had a Parental Substitute relationship with (and, if his late father was his stepfather, did marrying him reform the abusive mother Story remembers, or was Story just The Unfavorite).
  • In Shark Skin Suite, Brook's bosses Ken Shapiro and Shug Blatt talk about how they hope that Brook is wrong about the other side murdering one of her fellow lawyers before assigning a bodyguard to "watch her back." It turns out that their firm is working with the other side and the bodyguard is setting Brook up for a Bodyguard Betrayal, but that conversation makes it unclear whether they were both Locked Out of the Loop about the murder by their colleagues or if one of them knows about the murder and the corruption and is putting on a show but the other is completely innocent.
  • In Mermaid Confidential, after drug cartel higher-up and The Atoner Mercado Benzpapa is assassinated, he leaves behind detailed instructions about what to do when he dies, some of which are only viable in the short-term. Given his youth, he wouldn't have expected to die of natural causes anytime soon. Was he merely Crazy-Prepared? Or did he know about the specific plot that killed him and allow his own assassination due to guilt over his past crimes, his difficult current position in life, or the knowledge that his murder would backfire on his killers?
• Crazy Is Cool:
  • Serge is a Serial Killer prone to wild and rambling tangents and obsessions over minor things, but his keen insight, sympathy for the underdog, and fondness for elaborate death traps are played for awesomeness.
  • Coleman, the stoner who somehow has a complete and expert-level understanding of physics, chemistry, fluid dynamics, aeronautics, and several theoretical and mathematical concepts...which he only uses to get stoned
• Crosses the Line Twice: Both Serge's murder methods and many of his and Coleman/Lenny's other exploits would be horrifying in real-life but are over-the-top in their zaniness.
• Ensemble Dark Horse: Has its own page.
• Fanon Discontinuity:
  • Orange Crush can feel slightly more enjoyable if you ignore the scenes that confirm that Amnesiac Hero (or rather, amnesiac sidekick) Jack is Serge. Serge and his trademark actions aren’t terribly relevant for the otherwise standalone and unusually character-driven story, and Jack being Serge means that the Pair the Spares romance he gets into will experience a Happy Ending Override once the book ends.
  • Some fans would prefer to ignore the scenes in Florida Roadkill and Atomic Lobster where Serge adds Sharon and Rachael to his list of victims, even though neither of them is a particularly pleasant character and each previously attempted to kill Serge. Nonetheless, their fates can feel disturbing due to the amount of comic relief they provide and Serge's willingness and eagerness to kill them after months-long sexual relationships, which makes him feel more like a creepy real-world Serial Killer than his usual likable Vigilante Man self.
• Friendly Fandoms: The respective shared universes of Dorsey and Carl Hiaasen share a lot of readers due to both being Only in Florida crime comedies which often have larger-than-life characters and Black Comedy deaths.
• Growing the Beard: Florida Roadkill and Hammerhead Ranch Motel got respectable sales and reviews. Still, the plots aren't as good as those in later books, and the over-abundance of the Anyone Can Die trope and Serge's Early-Installment Weirdness nastiness can provide a decent amount of Too Bleak, Stopped Caring sentiment. For many, Orange Crush and/or The Triggerfish Twist are where the series begins finding a decent balance of plot twists, Character Development, a larger recurring cast, and whacky hijinks.
• Harsher in Hindsight: Every time Martha Davenport asks her milquetoast husband Jim to assert himself in any form of physical confrontation becomes this with the reveal at the end of Atomic Lobster since given her past life as Agent Foxtrot it means she could all but effortlessly clobbered the jerk in question. It's harder to defend her wanting Jim to be the one who has to pick a fight with bullies on their behalf after we've seen her kill three terrorists with her bare hands. Tellingly the author never has her do this in When Elves Attack and instead she sticks to wanting Jim to report rule breakers to various authorities.
• He's Just Hiding: Given how Coleman's explicit death is later retconned, it can occasionally be nice to hope that other characters who seem dead in spite of some readers hoping they would survive are really alive.
  • While Juan Diaz (the Butt-Monkey cousin of a criminal family) is presumed dead in a hurricane in Hammerhead Ranch Motel, he isn't shown being killed, making it possible he just ran off in the middle of the chaos.
  • In Triggerfish Twist, Sly "The Gentleman Bandit/The Courteous Crook" McGraw is shot by Jim Davenport and falls to the ground while looking in shock at the blood on his shirt. However, no one is described as checking his pulse and while scenes in later books mention Jim has killed multiple McGraws, no one actually mentions a number. This makes it possible to wonder if Sly might have just been injured and sent to prison, especially after his Affably Evil dialogue during his sole meeting with Serge.
  • In The Stingray Shuffle:
    • Plucky Comic Relief Ernest Hemingway impersonator Jethro tries to shoot himself with a shotgun, is interrupted by an assassination attempt and is later seemingly killed when a paramedic accidentally fires the gun while trying to get Jethro's toe out of the trigger guard. However, since the barrel isn't in Jethro's mouth like it was during the suicide attempt, he may have only been injured by the shot.
    • Jamaican gangster Zigzag is seemingly blown up by a grenade after having time for an Oh, Crap! reaction to a Pineapple Surprise, but since the scene only shows other characters reacting to the explosion, it can be nice to hope that he managed to jump clear in time after his Fire-Forged Friends moments with Russian gangster Ivan and efficiency in their pursuit of Serge.
  • In Cadillac Beach, Master Actor Doug, a particularly impressive villain, is shown falling to the ground after being shot in the chest, but the word dead is never used.
  • In Torpedo Juice, Gaskin Fussels/DEA Agent Wilson getting an anticlimactic "fatal wound to the head" can feel disappointing after his Obfuscating Stupidity Good All Along undercover cop antics, and it can be nice to wonder if that line just meant potentially fatal and not actually fatal.
  • Femme Fatale Rachael Rhodes from Atomic Lobster is one of the few people whose killing be Serge doesn’t really sit right with many fans due to her not doing much worse than doing drugs, or attacking Serge and Coleman in justifiable anger at learning they killed her sister in an earlier book. Since her Never Found the Body death involves falling off a cruise ship while suffocating on fire extinguisher foam, it can be nice to hope that she somehow survived. Swallowing some water could have even saved her life (assuming she coughed it up) by potentially cleansing out the foam blocking her lungs
  • Felicia Carmen from Pineapple Grenade is shot in front of Serge and later reported dead on the news, but that kind of death can be faked with some makeup, and she is a spy with the resources and motivation to drop out of sight.
  • In Coconut Cowboy, not all of the Wobbly Town Council and their flunkies get mentioned by name when Serge lures them into a death trap, making it possible that ones like Clem, the twins, Elroy, and Slow were absent.
  • In The Pope of Palm Beach, Evil Genius Salenca is last seen being placed in one of Serge’s Death Traps, but, unlike many characters who undergo similar fates, he neither dies onscreen nor has a later scene showing the discovery of his body. This makes it conceivable he could come back injured but alive.
• Jerkass Woobie: Johnny Vegas "the accidental virgin", with the emphasis on the Woobie part usually being more pronounced but depending on the book. The way that, over the course of thirty plus years, bizarre events keep interrupting his attempts to lose his virginity with women who are happy to spend time with him no matter how close he gets is a source of painful Cringe Comedy. That being said, he has little respect for many of the women he tries to bed and has occasional It's All About Me moments (just sighing and turning away when he sees his latest would-be conquest fall to her presumed death, getting rid of a homing beacon to delay rescue when he and a beautiful woman are in a lifeboat together, etc.) that cost him sympathy.
• Magnificent Bastard: In Cadillac Beach, Doug is introduced as a hapless, hard-partying salesman who gets dragged into one of Serge's dangerous adventures after killing a mobster in a prank gone wrong, but the ending reveals a devoutly brilliant new side of his personality. Doug is really a mob hitman who deliberately killed the mobster—a potential informer—and made it look like an accident so he'd have an excuse to tag along with Serge during Serge's search for a cache of stolen diamonds. As soon as Serge finds the diamonds, Doug drops the act, takes everyone prisoner, and reveals how he's been manipulating Serge for the entire book. When an impressed Serge compliments Doug's acting skills, Doug happily reveals that he's already a part-time actor looking for his big break. Doug then prepares to kill everyone, promising to do so painlessly, only to be foiled by blind luck.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Character:
  • Sly McGraw from Triggerfish Twist. While the rest of the McGraw family seem to largely be more brawn than brains Sly is able to have a polite conversation with Serge while holding him hostage and even matches Serge beat for beat when Serge starts going on one of his rambling diatribes about what's wrong with modern society, with the two debating if it's unique to Florida or happening all over the country. He promptly gets gunned down by Jim Davenport shortly there after, sadly making it impossible for him to show up again in Atomic Lobster which saw the return of the McGraw family.
  • Doug from Cadillac Beach spends the book being dragged into dangerous misadventures by Serge and surviving due to a being a decent Action Survivor, before the final act has him reveal himself as an Affably Evil Punch-Clock Villain hitman who has been manipulating Serge the whole time. His personality and his besting Serge that way could have made him an interesting Foil or Evil Counterpart to Jim Davenport if he had continued to occasionally show up in future books, but he is shot within three pages of the reveal about his true nature.
  • Ford Oelman from The Big Bamboo spends the vast majority of the novel being presented as a bland well meaning nobody who gets caught up in Serge's hijinks like many other characters Dorsey has used for the B-plots of his novels. In reality Ford is Serge's half-brother and wrote the 'script' for the con that we saw unfolding throughout the novel to take down two corrupt studio heads who had taken advantage of him. Not only do we only get one scene where Ford isn't trying to hide who he really is, but Dorsey never thought to bring him back even after we discover that Detective Mahoney is also Serge's half-brother presenting the possibility of them forming a team based around Serge's love of Flordia, Mahoney's of Noir, and Ford's of film.
  • Addled Addict Rachael from Atomic Lobster is a Suspiciously Similar Substitute for Sharon Rhodes besides being more of a Hot-Blooded hedonist and The Load rather than a calculating grifter, killer, and Honey Trap like Sharon. She is also Sharon's sister and mourns her death at the hands of Serge. This could have been used to explore how Serge's actions can hurt people, add a layer of tension and complexity to Serge and Rachael's future interactions for a while to come, and give Rachael a reason to reflect on how her own self-destructive lifestyle reflects Sharon's. Instead, she immediately tries to attack Serge and Coleman with a knife after learning the truth and learns the meaning of Bullying a Dragon. She also shows some signs of recognizing the toxicity of her Slap-Slap-Kiss relationship with Serge by suggesting roleplaying to get past their normal anger-filled sex, but this doesn’t lead to any visible Character Development in other parts of her life.
  • Story Long from Nuclear Jellyfish has better chemistry with Serge than most, if not all, of his other love interests throughout the series, is a dynamic and compelling character in her own right, and ends the book accepting a job for an old friend of Serge's, which could give them a reason to occasionally come into contact again throughout the series, whether as Friends with Benefits like Serge and Country or platonic friends like Serge and Brook eventually become. Nonetheless, she never reappears.
  • Stan from Pineapple Grenade is a "high-end repo man" and ex-CIA agent friend of Serge and Mahoney who repossesses airplanes, yachts, and race cars from rich people with unpaid debts. His action-filled exploits and willingness to do favors for Serge feel like the makings of a key recurring character, but he is a One-Shot Character with only a handful of scenes and lines.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot: In Atomic Lobster Martha Davenport agrees to join an anger management support group. We never actually see any of her meetings though, which is a real shame, especially since in the same book we eventually learn the actual reason for her anger issues, as a former US special ops soldier she can't properly adapt to a relaxed pace of civilian life. Not to mention they would have made a good counterpoint to her husband's own support group meetings to try and help him deal with his non-confrontational streak.
• Too Bleak, Stopped Caring: The B-Plot The Riptide Ultra-Glide features a nice couple from Wisconsin who have recently fallen on hard financial times going on vacation in Florida. Misfortune after misfortune befalls them, and their plotline abruptly terminates with them finally meeting Serge at the very end of the story with no clear idea of exactly what he'd do to make their lives better. While Dorsey's B-Plots often features nice guy characters suffering, it's typically balanced out by a clear happy ending which isn't the case here. By comparison, the two main non-Serge characters in Florida Roadkill had a clear happy ending!
• Unconventional Learning Experience: Aside from the graphic bloodshed and sex, the series can act as a travelogue of sorts for people who want to learn more about Florida due to Serge and Coleman going on road trips across lesser-known parts of the state and observing the sights, landmarks, and people while Serge endlessly chats about Florida's history.
• Unintentionally Sympathetic:
  • Rachael from Atomic Lobster is portrayed as the second coming of Token Evil Teammate Sharon Rhodes and has an "obnoxious and morally reprehensible" characterization, but can still feel like a Jerkass Woobie at the very least. She is living in dreary circumstances (she is a drug addict and mentions she sometimes does sex work to pay her electric bill) and otherwise minding her own business until she threatens Serge in an argument over an Asshole Victim's money and ends up coerced into becoming Serge’s companion without getting much if any say in the matter. Not once in 2-5 months does Serge seriously try to intervene with her pitifully desperate cocaine addiction. He only keeps her around for hate-fueled sex while giving her no respect and constantly twisting her arm behind her back during arguments (although she is just as vitriolic to him, if not more so and sometimes slaps him as well as the book progresses). She shows some standards by slapping groom-to-be Trevor for propositioning her on his wedding night. Finally, she only snaps and attacks her companions with a knife after she discovers that the people she's been having such a toxic relationship with killed her beloved sister Sharon ten years earlier, with Serge not showing any willingness to go easy on her despite the justifiable trauma of that revelation and how she is clearly "wired out of her head" at the time.
  • A few of the Asshole Victims Serge kills after a single meeting don't inspire pure Catharsis Factor feelings with their fates due to the truly painful ways Serge tends to kill them. This is especially true of the few who get minor Pet the Dog moments before dying, such as seagull-poisoner Clyde from Naked Came the Florida Man, who has a Papa Wolf moment when he thinks Serge is a pedophile who is harassing Clyde's nephews.
• The Un Twist: In Shark Skin Suite, there are constant mentions about how Brook and Shelby's bosses inexplicably assigned inexperienced rookies (albeit talented ones) and a Bunny-Ears Lawyer to the case and keep failing to secure important information, while the defense attorney keeps making sinister phone calls to an unseen confederate. All of this makes it blatantly obvious that the two law firms are working together and setting up Brook, Shelby, and Ziggy in a Springtime for Hitler ploy long before this is confirmed.
• Unintentionally Unsympathetic:
  • In The Stingray Shuffle, entertainment troupe members Andy, Frankie, Dave, Jeff, Saul, and Spider are portrayed as downtrodden, amiable underdogs who (minus Saul, who leaves the group due to his poor health) get a happy change in circumstances in the "Where Are They Now?" Epilogue. This is despite how (unlike one or two of their friends) they are completely indifferent toward their hypnotist Preston's penchant for using his craft to subject women and teenaged girls to a Bed Trick ploy (although Spider has the excuse of being under hypnosis himself, causing him to fixate on other stuff throughout most of his page time).
  • Even some people who love Serge throughout the series as a whole and/or dislike rude and self-centered Girl of the Week Rachael from Atomic Lobster admit that Serge's treatment of Rachael (and a few other characters in that book) can get very creepy and unpleasant.
    • Shortly after meeting Rachael (who he essentially kidnaps in the first place), Serge unilaterally announces that they're going to have sex because she is dancing erotically and he is such a Chick Magnet. He twists Rachael’s arm when she initially ignores him to keep dancing (although a Gilligan Cut makes it possible that she did consent before the actual sex), and “thrust[s] violently” to deliberately hurt her when she annoys him as they copulate (something which he repeats during a later scene). While Rachael ultimately turns out to enjoy having sex with Serge, being hurt in the middle of sex, and hurting Serge back, many fans still find Serge's actions throughout that subplot to be worse than plenty of things Serge has killed Asshole Victims over.
    • Serge tells another woman he sleeps with (he and Rachael are seemingly polyamorous) that "No" Means "Yes" when she initially asks him to stop his advances. In the very next book, Serge assumes his new Girl of the Week will have sex with him again because they did the previous night, but drops the issue when she refutes this notion, but whether this mitigates his previous actions or makes their wrongness more pronounced is debatable.
    • Serge is openly happy at finally having an excuse to kill Rachael in the climax after she turns out to be the sister of his old accomplice turned victim Sharon and tries to kill him and Coleman, seemingly seeing it as a perfectly acceptable way to end an unfulfilling relationship.
    • Finally, while Serge is unusually heroic in the book's A-plot, protecting his friends the Davenports from killers, he also gets a Kick the Dog moment when he and Rachael roleplay as the Davenports during sex. Serge's Jim impression is noticeably more insulting and crude than Rachael's Martha impression, and he knows that Jim is within earshot.
• The Woobie: The real hero or heroine of each novel is usually some poor schmuck who gets sucked into the vortex of Serge's craziness. Serge can sense immediately if the guy or gal is normal, and would ensure that the Woobie survives the events (and meet their One True Love in the process).