Tim Dorsey is an author of comic mysteries who displays a special skill of weaving pop culture enthusiasms with entertaining and unique storytelling.

In his latest novel, “The Big Bamboo,” he wisely takes his setting out of his home base of Florida, sending lead character Serge Storms to Hollywood, the perfect foil for his hyper kinetic pop-culture soaked criminal mind.

Serge gets entangled in the kidnapping of a Hollywood starlet, Ally Street, in a caper that plays more like an extreme case of Stockholm syndrome, with related on-set murders. As a hero, Serge is still a twisted criminal, but the villains he encounters are a few steps more evil, and as a character, Serge is charmingly funny, especially playing off his pot-addled sidekick, Coleman. (Think of Earl and Randy from “My Name Is Earl,” only not attempting to right any wrongs).

Over the course of several novels featuring Serge Storms, Dorsey has honed the character and made the plots a lot easier to understand and follow. By taking his characters out-of-state in “Big Bamboo,” he puts them on a course to ratchet up the entertainment value by tapping comic aspects previously unseen.

As observed by Ronald Reagan of all people in the quote Dorsey uses to introduce this novel, “No one goes Hollywood -- they were that way before they came here. Hollywood just exposed it.” As Hollywood brings out a different spin on Dorsey’s storytelling, one wonders he might do with other parts of the U.S. Changes of scenery could be the ticket to keep Dorsey’s work fresh and novel. Certainly he already knows that a series of novels like his, with a recurring protagonist, need to stay intriguing.