Serge is back
by Jason Koler
Tim Dorsey’s newest novel is a testament to the festive, peppermint-laced fables of any timeless holiday classic – only this tale revolves around two social deviants with a propensity for violence and narcotics.
When Elves Attack opens on Thanksgiving with Serge A. Storms and his sidekick Coleman speeding down the highway with a 9mm Glock, an oversized turkey and a joint.
“The most exciting holidays are the ones where not everyone is going to make it,” foreshadows the psychopathic Serge.
Without fail, the holiday season offers countless retakes and remakes of classic holiday themes, yet every 10 years or so, a truly unique work surfaces to become a holiday tradition – like Xtreme Caroling or decorating the Christmas tree with a candy cane shiv.
Like the films, Bad Santa or Christmas Vacation, Dorsey uses the yule-themes to propel his deranged, yet morally incorruptible characters into unbelievable situations that would seem implausible if the scenarios hadn’t been lifted from the evening news.
In one scene, Serge and Coleman take to the mall parking lot to thwart would-be thieves from preying on innocent Tampa Bay shoppers. Dressed like elves in green felt with jingle bell shoes, they spot another thief wearing the same disguise abduct a woman in broad daylight.
When Serge and Coleman get involved a crowd gathers to watch the holiday melee.
“Elf Fight! Elf Fight!”
The ruckus ends with Serge “stomping the daylights” out of the perpetrator and Coleman giving him a golden shower.
As the terrified woman is helped from the car by Serge, he says “Please don’t judge all elves by this one incident.”
Dorsey is at his Florida best during the latest Serge saga. Like the 13 previous novels, he calls upon his Florida travels and extensive interviews with Sunshine State residents to conjure settings and character of Elves.
Take Edith Grabowski.
The 93-year-old story narrator who, along with her three girlfriends Eunice, Edna and Ethel, sparked a national news story when their investment club beat 90 percent of the mutual fund managers by hedging on hunky CEOs. She claims to have recently given up intercourse based on the dwindling sexual positions (caused by medical equipment) and the VD epidemic sweeping through the senior population.
She describes Serge as “just another Florida lunatic, hyperactive as they come.”
