MASH Goes to Miami

M*A*S*H #11

by Richard Hooker, William E. Butterworth III

"Those irrepressible practioners of the cutting art invade unwary Miami."

Genres: Fiction, Humor

239 pages, Mass Market Paperback

First published September 1, 1976

About the author

Richard Hooker is the pseudonym of Hiester Richard Hornberger Jr. who was born February 1, 1924 and died November 4, 1997. He was an American writer and surgeon. His most famous work was his novel MASH (1968). The novel was based on his own personal experiences during the Korean War at the 8055th Mobile Army Surgical Hospital. It was written in collaboration with W. C. Heinz. The novel took 11 years to write. In 1970, and then again from 1972-1983 it was used as the basis for a critically and commercially successful movie and television series of the same name.

Librarian Note: There is more than one author in the Goodreads database with this name. This profile may contain books from multiple authors of this name.
Richard^Hooker

Reviews

[Christopher Rush · Rating 4 out of 5]

Keeping in mind the ratings for these books are within the M*A*S*H book universe and not literature of all-time, Miami is a pretty good book of the series, reminscent of the better earlier entries such as New Orleans, Paris, and Las Vegas. Part of the success of this book is the return of earlier series creations such as Ace and Prudence (though they make only brief cameos and Prudence is almost unrecognizable from her New Orleans self since she gets only two lines or so here) and the creation of few new characters. Though Hawkeye and Trapper are not in this book much, the return of Father Mulcahy as a dominant character makes up for that somewhat. The development of T. Mullins Yancey was nice, as well as the twist of him and Hassan getting tired of Boris and the opera. The return of the Painless Pole was neat for fans of the original movie. The return of Francois Mulligan as a twist on the once-stock disparate guy-girl romance was a bit of a stretch even for these books, but it was better than more new characters. Miami reminds one of a "bottle episode" on Star Trek: not much plot or special effects, but a lot of time for character development and interaction, and that's exactly what we want from these books - more time with the M*A*S*H gang and, even, their new buddies. Once again they don't even get to Miami until the last sixty-some pages, and the ending is another rapid conclusion wrapped up mostly through a monologue (similar to New Orleans), but all the beginning time back in Spruce Harbor, Paris and New Orleans was enjoyable and makes this a somewhat surprisingly good entry even this late into the series.

[Rob Smith, Jr. · Rating 3 out of 5]

The most frustrating part of this book is the less-than last 50 pages that take place in Florida with the main characters! This book should be titled: MASH Travels the Globe. The usual large bundle of characters are all over the place in the typical Butterworth fashion in this series. All traveling from Maine to Paris to Alaska to New Orleans, etc. This book should not have the name Miami in it.

The only use of a Miami setting is a pit stop at the Miami International Airport, something about a Catholic church early on and scenes in a hotel along Miami Beach that is loosely compared to The Fontainbleu.

The entire cover is deceiving. This is not a continuation of the MASH TV series. Butterworth is following the lead of Hooker and using those characters, plus plenty more. The cover art shows the characters in fatigues and indicates the gang is going to "invade unwary Miami". None of which happens. It's not atypical to have a cover not match the interior story. Considering the promises of "The smash hit TV series MASH Goes to Miami" and how far the story is from Miami, this is particularly bad packaging.

The writing is typical of the series. Butterworth is chug-a-lugging books at this point and the non-ending elongated names of everything and heavy line-by-line repetition are the filler. The writing is very funny and fun. There's not much of a story, though the makings of a few are present. It's all more of a travelogue. Next time I see author Tim Dorsey, I must ask him how much the Butterworth books influenced him.

The characters are not only well written, but written over and over and over again. I remember now why I had trouble getting through these three decades ago.

I believe this is my second time reading this entry in the series. Some 35 years ago I read most of the series. The trouble with the mutli-named everything is that after all these years, the books all merge together in my head. Reading this brought that to my attention.

Poking around about named authors, Richard Hooker and William Butterworth, I was surprised to learn Hooker didn't write the continuing series and Butterworth is multiple people! Shocked to learn Butterworth is also W.E.B. Griffin! I've always had fond memories of the MASH series. Now I have to try a "Griffin" book, something I've put off due to their length and size of series. Curious about the use of humor and strung together names.

I really like the humor and the writing and the characters. It's plotting that's a problem. Also, many today would likely despise the 4 or 5 names everything and body has.

Despite all that, the book is very funny and a genre vanishing from the bookshelves, so...
Bottom line: I recommend this book: 5 of 10 points.

[Alan · Rating 4 out of 5]

Rating 3.5

For a MASH book this wasn’t bad for about 80% of its length.
There were the usual story beats such as the title location only appearing at the very end of the story, the plot moving along at its own pacing until the final couple of chapters when the ending appears out of nowhere.
This was pretty much business as usual except slightly better than normal hence the rating of 4 (for a MASH novel and a 3 for anything else)
This did have more of father mulcahy than usual and less of horsey/boris/ et al which did make it better for me.

[Robert · Rating 5 out of 5]

One of the orphaned characters cut from the TV series finally makes an appearance (The Painless Polish dentist) and once again disparate storylines result in aircraft speeding toward an exotic destination for a madcap finale.

[Jeff Mayo · Rating 2 out of 5]

Another MASH book with the same formula. Only 20% of the action takes place in the named city. There is a huge cast of characters. There are very few original MASH characters, but Mulcahy and the Painless Pole make brief appearances.

[Kim · Rating 2 out of 5]

Really difficult to get through and I couldn't care less for the side characters in this part of the series.

[Al]

Those irrepressible practioners of the cutting art invade unwary Miami.