THE STINGRAY SHUFFLE

Serge A. Storms must be off his meds again, judging from the impressive array of corpses piled up and down the East Coast. Serge doesn’t need to kill three of the ex-KGB agents hired out by the Mierde Cartel’s Mr. Grande to recover the $5 million in drug money that Serge and his perma-stoned sidekick Lenny stashed at the Hammerhead Ranch Motel before it was turned into Lincoln Logs by Hurricane Rolando-berto (Hammerhead Ranch Motel, 2000) because Nikita backs his Mercedes into a swamp, Leonid gets electrocuted by the equipment he’s using to urge cooperation from an insurance adjuster from Buccaneer Life and Casualty, and Pavel belly-flops onto an alligator hunter’s bang stick. Serge does put out Igor’s lights, though, strapping him into a range cart and exposing him to the drives of several dozen homicidal golfers. And he dehydrates Brandon and Cameron, the two frat boys who defaced his beloved Florida East Coast Railway’s historic Rambler. But meting out justice must wait, since the remaining Russian, Ivan, has recruited Dmitri, Alexi, Vladimir, and of course Chuck, who chase Serge up the East Coast to New York. After a three-way shootout featuring the Russians, the Cosa Nostra, and some Jamaicans intent on protecting their slice of the urinal trade, he joins blues singer Eugene Tibbs, author Ralph Kunkelstein, and the five-woman Books, Booze, and Broads club for a murder mystery ride aboard the Silver Stingray, where life imitates art, and art imitates mayhem.

If you love wholesale carnage—and, really, who doesn’t?—Dorsey’s fifth is full-throttle fun.