You've finished the Reacher series. Again. You've burned through every Carl Hiaasen novel set in Florida. You need something new — but it has to hit that same nerve. Gritty. Fast. Smart. With a protagonist who doesn't flinch.
Meet Frankie Armstrong.
The DNA of a Great Crime Thriller Hero
What makes Jack Reacher work isn't the action — it's the code. Reacher operates by his own moral compass, completely outside the system, utterly self-sufficient. He walks into chaos and walks out the other side, usually leaving a lot of broken things behind him.
Carl Hiaasen's Florida books work differently but scratch the same itch. His characters are sharp-eyed outsiders — people who see Florida's corruption and madness with brutal clarity and refuse to look away. The humor is dark, the stakes are real, and the setting does half the work.
Frankie Armstrong is built from both of those traditions.
A British ex-soldier transplanted to Southwest Florida, Frankie carries the Reacher DNA — the military training, the instinct for threat assessment, the refusal to back down. But she's operating in Hiaasen territory: sun-baked, swamp-edged, morally compromised Florida, where the heat gets to everyone eventually.
Why Florida Is the Perfect Crime Setting
Florida has always been crime fiction's secret weapon. The state is genuinely strange — a collision of old money, new money, no money, tourist traps, retirement communities, and genuine wilderness. The heat compresses everything. Nobody's quite who they say they are.
Lee Child sets Reacher loose on the American road. Hiaasen plants his stories deep in the Florida ecosystem — the developers, the politicians, the wildlife, the weather. You Owe Me, the first Frankie Armstrong novel, does both. It takes a British outsider with a soldier's instincts and drops her into a Florida that is equal parts beautiful and dangerous.
If you've ever read a Hiaasen novel and thought I'd love this with more action and a protagonist who hits back harder — that's Frankie.
What Readers of Both Authors Will Find Here
The Reacher connection: Frankie Armstrong is ex-military, physically capable, and morally certain even when the law isn't on her side. She doesn't wait for permission. Like Reacher, she tends to find trouble — or trouble finds her.
The Hiaasen connection: The setting is real Florida, not the postcard version. The crimes are rooted in the kind of institutional rot and human greed that Hiaasen has been skewering for decades. The tone has teeth.
The difference: Frankie Armstrong is a woman navigating a world that didn't build its systems with her in mind. That adds a layer of tension that neither Reacher nor Hiaasen's male protagonists carry. She has to be smarter about when to push and when to wait — and the story is sharper for it.
Start with You Owe Me
The first book in the Frankie Armstrong series, You Owe Me, is available now on Amazon. If you're the kind of reader who finishes a Reacher novel in two sittings and immediately starts hunting for something with the same energy, this is your next read.
Florida crime fiction. A British ex-soldier who doesn't owe anyone anything — except the people who made her that way.
Get You Owe Me on Amazon → https://www.amazon.com/s?k=kerry+costello+you+owe+me&crid=3PGBC8SU9226N&sprefix=kerry+costello+you+owe+me%2Caps%2C164&ref=nb_sb_noss
— Kerry Costello is the author of the Frankie Armstrong series. Find out more at kerrycostellobooks.com.