TRIGGERFISH TWIST

Part-time Florida history buff and full-time whack job Serge A. Storms (Orange Crush, 2001, etc.) has a brand-new bag. When his housemates Sharon and Coleman burn down their Ybor City townhouse trying to freebase carpet lint, Serge moves the whole ménage out to Triggerfish Lane, where slumlord Lance Boyle rents units to the sleaziest tenants he can find, hoping to gross the other homeowners into selling him their units too. Unexpectedly, Serge loves the suburbs, throwing himself with untrammeled enthusiasm into the lives of his new neighbors—H. Ambrose Tarrington III, busted millionaire with a lingering fondness for Jaguars; Raul Sanchez, who spends 18 hours a day at Gillian Anderson Web sites; even Slowhand, Siddhartha, and Waste-oid, stoners from the University of South Florida who, until Serge, had been Boyle’s top-ranking nuisance tenants. But Serge’s favorite is Jim Davenport, a gentle, patient family man who recently moved his wife and children from Wisconsin because he read in a magazine that Tampa was the third most livable city in America. Serge is so fiercely protective of Jim that those who harass him, like neighbor Jack Terrier, who refuses to leash his Doberman, and Scorpion, the sociopathic boyfriend of Jim’s daughter, meet grisly, lovingly described ends at Serge’s hands. But can Serge’s vigilance save Jim from the wrath of the lethal McGraws, who have a grudge against him for air-bagging their youngest brother to death during a failed carjacking?

Placing homicidal Serge on the side of the angels still leaves room for mayhem aplenty in Dorsey’s riotous fourth outing.