Kerry Costello | Updates

Why Southwest Florida Is Crime Fiction's Most Underrated Setting

Kerry Costello — Fri, 8 May 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Everyone knows Miami. South Beach, neon lights, Dexter, Miami Vice. Florida crime fiction has been synonymous with Miami for decades.

But Southwest Florida? That's different. And that difference is exactly what makes it such fertile ground for crime thrillers.

The Real Florida Nobody Writes About

Naples, Florida is one of the wealthiest cities in the United States per capita. It's manicured, sun-drenched, and expensive — the kind of place where people come to disappear into a comfortable retirement or a second life.

Which makes it perfect for crime.

Old money and new money sitting side by side. A service economy that keeps the whole machine running invisibly. The Everglades pressing in from the east. The Gulf of Mexico to the west. And underneath the perfect lawns and waterfront properties, all the complexity that comes when people have a great deal to protect — or a great deal to hide.

What the Setting Adds to a Thriller

The best crime fiction is inseparable from its location. James Lee Burke's Louisiana bayou bleeds into every page of his Dave Robicheaux novels. Carl Hiaasen's Florida is a character in its own right — wild, contradictory, darkly funny. When a setting is done right, you can smell it.

Southwest Florida has a specific atmosphere that's different from any other part of the state. The light is intense. The seasons blur. The tourist season transforms the region entirely — hundreds of thousands of people arriving between November and April, then the population dropping back down to the locals who stayed through the summer heat.

That rhythm creates natural story structure. Who's here in season and why? Who's a local, who's passing through, who's hiding?

Enter Frankie Armstrong

You Owe Me, the first book in the Frankie Armstrong series, is set in this world — the real Southwest Florida, not a generic sun-and-sand backdrop.

Frankie is a British ex-soldier who has ended up here, in this improbable corner of America. She's an outsider twice over: foreign and military in a civilian world, working-class instincts in a wealthy postcode. She sees the gulf between what Southwest Florida presents to the world and what runs underneath it.

That tension — between the polished surface and the grim reality beneath — drives the story.

Florida Crime Fiction Worth Reading

If you're a fan of the genre, Southwest Florida deserves a place on your map alongside Miami and the Keys. It's got everything a crime novelist could want: wealth, inequality, wilderness, secrets, and enough sunshine to make the darkness feel even darker by contrast.

The Frankie Armstrong series is set here, in this specific, overlooked, fascinating corner of the state. Start with You Owe Me and see Florida crime fiction through completely different eyes.

[Get You Owe Me on Amazon → kerrycostellobooks.com]

— Kerry Costello is the author of the Frankie Armstrong series, set in Southwest Florida. Find out more at kerrycostellobooks.com.

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If You Love Jack Reacher and Carl Hiaasen, You Need to Meet Frankie Armstrong

Kerry Costello — Fri, 1 May 2026 00:00:00 +0000

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.

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Backlash - Frankie Armstrong Murder Mystery - Book 4