The Official
Elmore Leonard Website

Often when a book or movie reaches for Great Florida Myth quirkiness, a Weeki Wachee mermaid comes in handy.

Consider Elmore Leonard’s classic Sunshine State noir novel “Maximum Bob,” where the title character’s wife, Leanne, is a psychic and Weeki Wachee mermaid gone to seed. (She had retired abruptly after an alligator had made its way into the mermaid tank. Something that has been known to happen.)

Leonard’s novels picture Florida as just the kind of place where a girl might meet her husband while swimming in a fishtail and breathing through a hose. Additional proof, as though more were needed, that this is not a normal state.

And now it seems that future Leannes could be state employees. Like park rangers, corrections officers and assistant undersecretaries of community affairs. Proof, as though more were needed, that this not a normal state government

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