Squeeze Me

When I saw Carl Hiaasen on a speaking tour for Razor Girl, he joked that he hoped Florida didn't cause any problems in the 2016 election. Instead, they became the site of the Winter White House. And at a thinly veiled version of Mar a Lago, Kiki Pew Fitzsimmons, a member of the wealthy and elderly presidential fan club called the Potussies, gets eaten by a snake during the White Ibis Ball for IBS. The club manager calls in wildlife rangler Edie Armstrong to handle the problem and then hires two incompetent (of course) criminals to remove the body (and snake) from Edie's storage locker. Of course they stop at a strip bar along the way, which leads to the decomposed snake disrupting the FLOTUS's motorcade. As usual, Hiaasen ties several ridiculous side stories together into a well supported plot, but my favorite part of the book was the references to all of the minor charity balls being held "after the pandemic." Partially because "Stars for SARS" sounds funny, but partially because it gives hope that there will be an "after" when life returns to normal. Or as normal as it gets in Hiaasen's Florida.

Lucky You

Carl Hiaasen was a guest at Bouchercon 1998. I wasn't really familiar with him back then, but a few months later I read the copy of Lucky You that had been in the goody bag and may have been given a slightly wider berth on SEPTA that week. I then handed it to my parents who were packing for a cruise, and both separately learned that they couldn't read it in public areas because of the looks they got.  Particularly my dad,who had a distinctive, obnoxious, and loud laugh. Did I enjoy it as much twenty years later?

JoLayne Lucks lives in a town full of questionable miracles and adjacent to a privately owned (but for sale) wilderness.  When she wins the Florida lottery (well, half of it) features writer Tom Krome reluctantly goes to interview her. He finds that she's been beaten by the two-man self-proclaimed militia who won the other half of the jackpot and that she wants the money to protect the baby turtles who live in the tentatively sold wetlands. I remember all that, plus the evolution of Turtle Boy, the militia's kidnapping of a Hooters waitress, and the fact that JoLayne reclaimed her ticket.  I did not remember Krome's soon-to-be-ex-wife (an actress who'd creatively avoided service of the divorce papers for two years), Krome's girlfriend and her husband (a murderous judge with a dim clerk), or the fact that a money-laundering mobster had put in a bid for JoLayne's wetlands. Hiaasen follows his typical formula - quotable and witty descriptions of bizarre, only-in-Florida crimes and characters - but he didn't tie the subplots together as tightly as he does now, either thematically or chronologically (the main plot ends with about 50 pages left in the novel). Anti-government militias, even incompetent two-man outfits, are a bit darker than they were in 1998, so I cringed a bit as I laughed -but I still laughed. Maybe not as loud and as obnoxiously as my dad did, but enough that I didn't pull the book out if the train was crowded.

Razor Girl

I saw Carl Hiaasen on his promotional tour for Razor Girl.  Besides learning that the frozen dead monitor lizard in Basket Case was real (I did not expect that), I found out that a woman did cause an accident by shaving he personal topiary while driving to a date (with her husband in the passenger seat).  Hiaasen used that Only in Florida story as a jumping-off point for another novel featuring restaurant inspector Andrew Yancy.  Still stuck on roach patrol and dating Dr. Rosa Campesino (who's transferred from the morgue to the ER), he meets razor girl Merry Mansfield because of beard hair in a pot of quinoa.

I should explain.  The beard hair belongs to Buck Nance, a/k/a Matt Romberg, a Wisconsin-born accordion player turned (along with his bandmate brothers) star of Bayou Brethren, "reality" TV stars who raise pedigree chickens and use the feathers for bespoke flies.  His beard ends up in the quinoa because Merry Mansfield rear ended the wrong rental car leading to the kidnapping of Buck's agent, Lance Coolman, instead of Martin Trebeaux, owner of Sedimental Journeys (and someone unwise enough to refurbish the beach in front of a mob-owned resort with broken glass).  Without Lance to keep him on script, Buck adds some racist and homophobic jokes to the "colorful" stories he's been booked to tell at The Parched Pirate in Key West.  Not unreasonably fearing for his life, Buck escapes, ducks into the kitchen at Clippy's, and hacks off his beard.  Since the mayor and his partner own Clippy's, Andrew's boss calls him out on an emergency inspection, and he keeps the hair.

OK, maybe I can't explain.  Suffice it to say that Hiaasen adds in some six pound rodents, a fake emotional support dog, a shady lawyer, multiple kidnappings, a relocation to Norway, a mongoose, the notorious Stoney's, and a combination deodorant and roll-on Viagra.  Typical Hiaasen - half a dozen crazy plots which somehow all come together in the last few pages.  One of his better novels, and guaranteed to get you some extra space if you read it on public transit.

Skinny Dip

It's not you, it's me - that sums up my feelings towards Skinny Dip.  I've loved most of Carl Hiaasen's novels with their insane characters, improbable crimes, and environmental messages, but this one didn't really work for me.  It's simpler than most of his novels, with only one main plot and a minor subplot.  Tired of telemarketers calling during dinner, recently fired and probably bipolar single mother Honey Santana decides to exact revenge on Boyd Shreve.  She convinces him that he's won a trip to an exotic Florida island where she hopes to…well, I don't know and neither, really, does Honey.  Boyd falls for the bait and flies to Florida with his current (soon to be ex) mistress, Eugenie and Honey leads the two into the Everglades.  Trailing them are Honey's abusive former boss (whose fingers have been cut off and reattached to the wrong stumps), a PI hired by Shreve's soon-to-be ex-wife, and Honey's sensible but concussed 12-year-old son and not-so-sensible ex-husband.  I laughed quite a bit (particularly at the encounters between novice guide Sammy Tigertail and the ghost of the tourist who met his untimely end on Sammy's first excursion), but overall, it didn't leave much of an impression.

Bad Monkey

I wonder what it's like in Carl Hiaasen's brain, but I'm sure I want to know.  It's clearly a strange place, full of strange crimes, corrupt developers, noble if off-the-rails reporters and policemen, smart women, crooked politicians, and strange fetishes.  And animals, like the titular Bad Monkey.  The monkey, an unruly former co-star of Johnny Depp, doesn't have much to do with the story.  He's Neville Strafford's pet, at least until the Neville hands him over to the Voodoo Queen in exchange for a curse.  But more about that later.

Bad Monkey starts with a Florida Keys tourist on the Misty Momma IV catching a dismembered arm (which, of course, is giving the finger).  It falls to disgraced sheriff's officer Andrew Yancy to bring the arm to the Miami Medical Examiner's Office for identification.  The arm belongs to Nichols Stripling, a medical supply magnate (he specializes in scooter chairs and Medicaid fraud) who apparently died in a boating accident.  The arm's daughter thinks her stepmother was involved, so she asks Yancy (who has by then been demoted to restaurant inspector, due to his assault of his girlfriend's husband in full view of a cruise ship) to investigate.  When a man in an orange rain poncho murders the first mate from the Misty Momma IV, and a doctor involved in Stripling's fraud commits suicide, Yancy follows the trail to the Bahamas.  Once there, he meets Neville who has given the Voodoo Queen Driggs the monkey in exchange for a curse on the developer to whom Neville's sister sold their land (including Neville's house).

If Bad Monkey sounds a bit sane for a Carl Hiaasen book, it's because I haven't explained Yancy's campaign against the developer who's built a monstrosity on the lot next to his house, Drigg's antics, multiple restaurant inspections, or why the Russian mob helps tie up the loose ends.  It's typical Hiaasen in that respect, with several incredible (and incredibly funny) threads that barely manage to make sense but somehow resolve.  Read it - just not in a place where hysterical laughter might disturb those around you.

Star Island

Take Britney Spears's career profile and Lindsey Lohan's stage mother, remove all talent, and add an unwise mix of vodka, Red Bull, hydrocodone, birdseed, and stool softener.  That's how Carl Hiaasen introduces Cherry Pye, and her stunt double, Ann DeLusia.  As Cherry's mother sneaks the drug-addled starlet out through a service entrance, a particularly disreputable paparazzo snaps a photo of Ann being loaded into an ambulance - and discovers that the thrashing girl has brown, not green eyes.  Bang Abbot isn't your everyday sleazy photographer-for-hire, though - he's the recipient of a tainted Pulitzer Prize - so he's not going to settle for a photo of Cherry's double.  No, he's going to kidnap her and take enough pictures for a coffee table book to be published after Cherry's inevitable early death.

Except he kidnaps Ann, who a few days earlier was rescued from the wreck of her rental car by Skink (the former governor of Florida) so she can help him quash a shady real estate deal.  Oh, and Cherry's new bodyguard is a 6'10 ex-con with a weed-whacker where his left hand should be and who want to return to his previous job, shady real estate deals.  Star Island is classic Hiaasen - con men, an ineptly executed crime, improbable events (trust me, do not read how Bang Abbot won his Pulitzer in public unless you want to scare those around you), and weirdness that goes so far beyond the suspension of disbelief it's saved only by Hiaasen's whacked-out creativity.  Only Carl Hiaasen can surround a tight plot with the insanity of Cherry's mixers or Skink's idea of appropriate punishment and somehow make them fit.