Awesome / Serge Storms

• Serge's regular Death Traps can be as brilliantly complex and sometimes but not always poetic as they are vicious, especially when he is acting to avenge wrongs against a new friend or protect them from attackers. One standout example is in Pineapple Grenade, when he ties up the Hate Sink Big Bad and puts him in a boat with the steering wheel jammed so that it will steer through a burning, miles-wide oil slick that is only there because of that guy’s crimes. And then, when the man begs for mercy, Serge seemingly relents, only to reveal that his idea of mercy is putting a nice carpet under the guy’s feet, quipping that his form of mercy is sending the guy out in style.
• In some books, Serge goes beyond mere creative traps and is a full-blown The Chessmaster, such as in Cadillac Beach (where he organizes a Decoy Getaway through a tunnel at a mental hospital and then doubles around to stow away in a truck), Coconut Cowboy (where he tricks most of the murderers, drug dealers, and other lowlifes into turning on each other and tossing each other down a sinkhole by pretending to cut deals with them, then double-crosses the last man standing and sends lethal volts of electricity into the sinkhole), Nuclear Jellyfish (where he and Story spend the whole book hiding their long-game to avenge the attempted murder of Story’s brother and, for misdirection purposes, even manage to fool Coleman into thinking they just met and Mahoney into thinking that Story is plotting to kill Serge), or Shark Skin Suite (where he tricks Amoral Attorneys into submitting what they think is fake evidence that will get their opposing counsel arrested and disqualified but is really genuine evidence of their own misdoings).
• In When Elves Attack, Serge sabotages the judgment-proof house of a Corrupt Corporate Executive so it will collapse and his victims can sue him for his non-judgement-proof insurance check.
• The Kosovo sequence in Orange Crush is alternately awesome and tragic as the National Guardsmen fight to save each other and some innocent villagers from cops carrying out ethnic cleansing. Aging Sergeant Rock Tex Jackson makes several Friendly Sniper kills and then singlehandedly charges and takes out one group of Serbian cops manning a grenade launcher before being mortally wounded. Corporal Lech Kluzinski helps Tex wipe out a squad of enemy soldiers about to gun down some unarmed civilians and charges another grenade launcher (which is aiming at his friends) unarmed after losing his weapon, with both him and the grenadier being blown up after Lech tackles the man. Private Roosevelt Washington carries Ensign Newbie Marlon to cover in a fireman's carry and throws him behind a barricade after being shot in the back three times. Marlon himself ends up standing between a family of civilians and seven cops before being narrowly saved by a Gunship Rescue
• In Triggerfish Twist, Butt-Monkey Jim Davenport kills a violent carjacker who is threatening his baby daughter by tricking the man into sticking his head in the glove compartment and then triggering the airbag. Then, in the climax of the book, despite having never used a gun before, he manages to gun down two of the man's vengeful brothers.
• In Stingray Shuffle, Ivan and Zigzag use stolen racehorses to chase down a train with a briefcase of money onboard, then transfer from the horses to the train just in time to avoid slamming into the wall outside a tunnel.
• In The Big Bamboo, aspiring scriptwriter and grifter Ford Oleman and his friends con some crooked bankers who foreclosed on their families in the past, frame some of the worst Horrible Hollywood types around for murder, and get Ford plenty of publicity and a deal for his movie while everyone else views him as an innocent victim.
• Both Cadillac Beach and The Riptide Ultra-Glide feature chess masters who play Serge into carrying out their agendas and then end up holding him at gunpoint without him ever suspecting a thing. In the former book, Serge only triumphs due to a fluke, while in the latter story, his manipulators learn how it feels when The Bad Guy Wins.
• In Atomic Lobster:
  • Addled Addict Rachael Rhodes gets some Beware the Silly Ones moments once she turns on Serge and Coleman, still coming at them with a knife after being repeatedly punched in the chin and whacked on the head. After being forced to swallow fire extinguisher foam, she takes a few more swings and then partially pumps her own stomach by slamming herself against the TV console.
  • Every moment where One-Man Army Agent Foxtrot is shown in the thick of battle, whether knocking out six terrorists at once in the present or charging at an enemy outpost, blazing away at a vastly superior force and calling in an airstrike on the position in a flashback (an experience Foxtrot survives).
• In her Back Story leading up to Nuclear Jellyfish, Story Long bit off a rapist's penis, kicked various strip club patrons in the nuts for groping her, beat up an anti-abortion protestor during an argument while several months pregnant (although that moment may be more YMMV, depending on the reader's politics), and used Rules Lawyer tactics to outmaneuver some cops shutting down her strip club on obscenity charges by having the dancers perform nude Shakespeare so that there was an element of art (no matter how poorly performed) to the performance that defeated the legal definition of obscenity. During the book, she is quite the actress while going along with a plan to avenge an attack on her brother, and slits the Big Bad's throat while doing a striptease for him.
• After the Big Bad of Tiger Shrimp Tango gets the drop on Serge and is about to kill him, Girl of the Week Brook, who has been a woobie Innocent Bystander up to that point, gets the drop on him and shoots him with a gun hidden in her shopping bag.
• After graduating from law school at the beginning of Shark Skin Suite, Brook spends the next two books winning one legal battle against corrupt business or government officials after another, using Refuge in Audacity methods to get Catharsis Factor results. One of her finest hours is getting a bank that sent illegal foreclosure notices to get foreclosed on itself and humiliated on live TV as everything in the main branch besides the money in the vault is carted away (not even their sign is spared). Brook is prepared to move onto their other locations until they drop their suit and give her clients an enormous settlement fee.
  • In Shark Skin Suite, Brook's main co-counsel Shelby, who is just as green as she is, spends the first few arguments completely outflanking and humiliating an Army of Lawyers when it comes to winning over the jury. Her other co-counsel, Ziggy The Stoner, also proves to be quite the Bunny-Ears Lawyer for organizing an ironclad lawsuit in the first place, figuring out one of his plaintiffs has thrown in with the defense, and discrediting that man’s pro-defense statements on cross-examination.
  • On a non-legal note, Ziggy manages to make a bong out of his briefcase to sneak his marijuana past courthouse security. Granted, this can have a disastrous and unethical effect on his court performance, but the effort is still impressive.
• In Clownfish Blues, while helping Serge with a Zany Scheme, backwoods fisherman Jasper casually reveals that he has enjoyed reading several works of great American literature that even the relatively brainy Sege was barely been able to get through, leaving Serge feeling stupid next to the guy. Then, the man tops this off by playing a banjo to remind a couple of captives of Deliverance and scare them more.
• In The Pope of Palm Beach:
  • Cartel accountant Salenca frames himself for embezzlement in a deliberately clumsy way that will make his bosses look closer and find "evidence" that Salenca's direct superior is the real embezzler, at which point Salenca brutally kills the man and requests his job.
  • A Corrupt Corporate Executive responsible for making lifesaving drugs impossible to afford is poisoned and needs his own drugs for an antidote. Serge drops him off near a pair of pharmacies without enough money to buy the drugs. The pharmacists are willing to give the guy his pills on credit until they recognize who he is and, out of anger for all the lives he's ruined, refuse to lift a finger to help him unless he will call corporate headquarters and lower the drug prices for everyone. Both Serge (for planning out that exact scenario) and the pharmacists come out equally impressive by the time that scene is over.
  • Serge lures a cartel team that has him and his companions on the run to an old zoo he visited as a child and uses his memories to trick each Mook into stumbling across an animal that will kill him.
• In Naked Came the Florida Man, aspiring female football player Chris proves to be a Badass Bookworm when she writes a science paper that is better than anything her science teacher could have ever done. Then, when the teacher flunks her out of jealousy, her coach finds out, gives the man a "The Reason You Suck" Speech, and gets the principal to start an investigation into the teacher that gets him fired for multiple acts of misconduct.
• In No Sunscreen for the Dead:
  • Throughout the book, data cruncher Benmont identifies multiple fugitives from justice and identifies a conspiracy to murder various retired spies just by spending a few hours examining things like who has been renting certain movies near crime scenes or how certain fake IDs have similar social security numbers.
  • Cold War spy Tofer tells his old friend Ted that their friendship (when Ted was in high school) began as a ploy to pump Ted for information. Ted reveals that he figured out what Tofer was doing from day one, walked into an FBI office, and set himself up as a double agent to feed Tofer false information.
  • Serge has been helping the retirement home communities have a Now, Let Me Carry You moment and fight off a group of wet work operatives with fireworks, angry swans, and flour bags shot from inner tube slingshots.
• In Tropic of Stupid, after petty-minded senate candidate Jack Grayson is humiliated by someone filming a classist, private campaign speech he makes, he lashes out at the event organizer, powerful lawyer Nathan Sparrow, and tries to get his daughter fired from her job as a cop. Nathan, who had confiscated the film (and discovered that the camera was still running after he confiscated it and captured Grayson insulting both his donors and his voters in the same sentence), promptly releases it to the media in sections to build up the story and anticipation, wrecking the politician's career.
• In Mermaid Confidential:
  • Cartel heir AJ Benzappa is assassinated after his father Raffy starts turning senile so that, under the day-to-day management of A.J.’s Non-Action Guy brother Mercado, the cartel will be a pushover for its rival, Morales. Benzappa enforcer Cinco tells Mercado that he and AJ already planned out a series of retaliatory hits of their own in the event of something like this and are already carrying them out without Mercado getting involved. They are effective enough to bring the Morales Cartel and its business to a standstill. Then, even after Morales has Mercado and later his immediate successor killed, the Benzappa soldiers still keep fighting back with the same intensity and eventually triumph and kill Morales.
  • The climax sees a bunch of Morales thugs attacking a hospice for Littlest Cancer Patients because it has been made The Protectorate of the Benzappa cartel due to (among other things) the hospice also taking care of Raffy. Serge and a local deputy all get caught up in the melee and (along with Cinco) shield the kids with their own bodies while gunning down attackers. Serge also throws a bunch of cherry bombs taped to cans of lilac-scented Febreze at the attackers, and a wounded Julie, the main care provider, takes out the last attacker.
• Many climaxes have battles worthy of an action movie. Still, The Maltese Iguana is one of the most notable ones, with Serge and his allies being chased by a stolen military vehicle, commandeering a bus, and being chased across the bridge where the climax of True Lies was filmed, with Serge taking them through the middle of an actual movie shoot in the process.