Opening sentences: Pineapple Grenade by Tim Dorsey

Title: Pineapple Grenade: A Novel
William Morrow (Jan. 24, 2012), Hardcover, 352 pages
Rating: 3/5

Opening sentences in a novel can set the tone and help readers decide about the book.

"A prosthetic leg with a Willie Nelson bumper sticker washed ashore on the beach, which meant it was Florida.

Then it got weird.

Homicide detectives would soon be stumped by the discovery of the so-called Hollow Man. Empty torso with no external wounds, like all his organs had been magically scooped out. Little progress was made in the case until a TV station began calling him the Jack-O'-Lantern Man, which immediaely doubled the number of nicknames.

But right now, the victim had yet to be found. In fact, he was still breathing." (prologue)
From the 15th in the Serge Storms Mystery Series.

Comments: A very strange homicide situation and even stranger main characters. My first reaction was - Florida is another country! Car hijackings and robberies of unwitting tourists off the highway leading from the Miami airport , for instance. An old news item, I thought. Is this really still going on, or is this part of the fiction of this mystery novel?  In any case, the writing and characters did not grab me. I had a hard time getting into the book. But his other books have made the author a New York Times bestselling author.

I received a complimentary review copy of this book.