Double Whammy

By Carl Hiaasen

R.J. Decker used to work for a large Florida newspaper as a photographer. But he got into trouble and landed in jail. After prison, he was jobless and wifeless and found work as an insurance investigator. 

Dennis Gault, wealthy man who wants to make a name for himself in the bass fishing tournament circles, hires R.J. to investigate Dickie Lockhart, a big name in the bass fishing world. Gault believes Lockhart has been cheating, planting prize-winning fish in the lakes during tournaments. He wants R.J. to get photos of Lockhart planting fish.

Lockhart's home base is in Harney County, Florida (not a real place). So R.J. heads there and does some sleuthing. A former associate from the newspaper also lives there, Ott Pickney. Ott dismisses Gault's claims that Lockhart is a cheater. But he does advise R.J. to hire a local man, Skink, to serve as a guide in the area. Ott also is the one who tells R.J. about the recent death of another pro-bass fisherman locally, Bobby Clinch. 

But after thinking about what R.J. told him, Ott decides to take a closer look at the remains of Clinch's bass boat. While doing so, he is found by a couple of thugs who take him into the woods and kill him. R.J. and Skink find Ott's body sunk in a lake. They are discovered by the thugs and Skink shoots and kills one of them. R.J. thinks Lockhart is behind the murders of Bobby and Ott and he and Skink head to Louisiana to catch Lockhart cheating at a big bass tournament there. But things don't pan out quite as they planned. They don't find Lockhart cheating, although they do find fish being planted. And the morning after the tournament, R.J. finds Lockhart dead. He is worried that Skink killed Lockhart because Skink had threatened to do exactly that. So instead of staying in Louisiana, R.J. drives back to Florida. Only to discover that he is being blamed for death of Lockhart. And that Skink had nothing to do with Lockhart's death.

This was a pretty good read. Unfortunately, like most of Hiaasen's Florida novels, it has some pretty gruesome scenes in it. The dog head business is pretty rank and Skink loses one of his eyes to a rather graphic beating. I always find that aspect of Hiaasen's stories a bit hard to take. But besides that, it was a pretty entertaining story and it is the first appearance of Hiaasen's recurring character, Skink, a wild man who lives off road kill and has no fixed home in the later novels and who used to be the governor of Florida.

Here is a review by Publishers Weekly.

Native Tongue

 

By Carl Hiaasen

The Amazing Kingdom of Thrills has made Francis X. Kingsbury of South Florida a wealthy man. But Francis, or Frankie the Ferret as he is known to some folks up north who would really like to track him down, has dreams of rivaling the big Florida amusement parks. So he is building a golf course next to his park. Never mind that he is tearing down critical habitat and uprooting native trees and plants. Never mind that his golf course plans to dump waste water near one of the few coral reefs in the area.

Still there are a few people who would like to keep a least a bit of Florida environmentally healthy. One of them is Skink, the ex-governor and current wild man who lives in the back country and eats road kill. The other is Joe Winder who likes fishing off that reef that Frankie's development is threatening and who happens to work for Frankie in the park's public relations department. 

When a park employee turns up dead under suspicious circumstances, Winder senses a cover-up that centers around the park's star exhibit: the last two living Blue-Tongued Mango Voles, who are in a captive breeding program intended to bring the voles back from the brink of extinction, similar to the Dusky Seaside Sparrow program at Disney World: Washington Post article.. (Frankie has a bug in his ear about Disney World and fancies himself a rival to the giant park in Orlando.) Unfortunately the two voles get kidnapped by an environmental group who wants to use them to blackmail Frankie into halting the golf course development. 

Another entry in Hiaasen's Florida saga, this one seemed more cohesive to me than some of his other novels. The plot is less convoluted and doesn't seem to have so many sidetracks that can make the reader feel a bit lost at times. Skink, of course, makes his usual appearance, acting in this story as a kind of deus ex machina, enacting justice on baddies and moving behind the scenes. 

I liked this story a lot. It was not so complex as some of his stories can be and everything wraps up very nicely. He even includes a fun afterword where we get to see how the various characters (who are not killed off) end up. Very enjoyable story.

Review by Publishers Weekly.

Stormy Weather

By Carl Hiaasen

A killer hurricane has blasted through Florida, shattering buildings and lives. But to some, the resultant chaos is merely a golden opportunity to make some money.
One of those opportunists is Max Lamb. On his honeymoon in Orlando with his wife, Bonnie, Max has grabbed his video camera and headed into the danger zone to get video of the disaster, with a view to selling the footage to the networks. Unfortunately, he runs afoul of Skink, one of Hiaasen's recurring characters. Skink is a big, scary swamp thing and he grabs Max and sticks a shock collar on his neck and hauls him out into the back country. Where he proceeds to shock Max into abject compliance.
Also looking to score are Edie Marsh and a thuggish fellow called Snapper. After their first scam fails, they hook up with distressed homeowner, Tony Torres. Tony's house is severely damaged and he wants a quick settlement from the insurance company. Since his wife is joint owner of the house and she has run off with her boyfriend, Tony can't get the insurance check without her signature. Naturally, given that she has run off, Tony is not willing to share the settlement with her. So Edie will pretend to be Mrs, Torres and, when the check arrives, they will split the funds three ways and then split. And the real Mrs. Torres gets screwed out of her fair share.
Tony was a trailer salesman. The trailers he sold were supposed to be hurricane resistant. But they weren't and people died. One of those people was the mother of a mobster from up north, Ira Jackson. He tracks down Tony and kills him. Which leaves Edie and Snapper in the lurch. When the adjuster shows up, Snapper tries to pass himself off as Torres. But the adjuster quickly figures out that they are scammers. Edie seduces him and talks him into joining the scam, once again to split the money three ways.
Meanwhile Max is still being tormented by Skink and Bonnie has come to the hurricane zone looking for him. She got on phone call from him letting her know he had been taken but that the crazy man who grabbed him is not asking for any kind of ransom. Bonnie falls in with a local man, a young drifter who is living off a large insurance settlement from when he nearly died in a commercial plane crash.
And then there is the policeman, Jim Tile, whose policewoman girlfriend gets beaten up by Snapper. Tile is friends with Skink. He enlists Skink in tracking down Snapper and things just get more and more complicated from there.

I guess this was an OK read. There are so many characters coming and going, it is a bit hard to keep track of it all. It is also supposed to be very funny but I didn't find so. According to the blurbs on the cover, it is "hysterically funny" (USA Today), has "hilarious, black humor" (Wall Street Journal), and is "howlingly funny" (Cosmopolitan). I guess those blurbers are more easily amused than I am.
Also, I have never been a big fan of the recurring character, Skink. He's creepy. I'm getting tired of him.

Review by Publishers Weekly.

Razor Girl

By Carl Hiaasen

Buck Nance is a reality TV show star doing an appearance at a club in Key West when his racist and homophobic comments and jokes upset the patrons and send Buck fleeing into the night. His agent, Lane, is usually there to keep Buck safe and happy, but Lane is a no-show. In fact, Lane has been kidnapped.
While driving to join Buck at the club, Lane was in an accident that was really an on-purpose. Rear-ended by a pretty young woman, Merry Mansfield, Lane lets her hitch a ride in his car and he soon finds himself kidnapped. But it turns out to be a case of mistaken identity, wrong man, wrong car.
Merry's accomplice plans to murder Lane just to get rid of him but Merry lets him go free (he is  quickly kidnapped again by a local whack-o). She and her accomplice then proceed to kidnap the correct man, who has run afoul of some East Coast gangsters.
Meanwhile, Andrew Yancy, ex-cop and current health inspector, is alarmed to find the empty lot next to his house is under assault by people who plan to build a large house on it and block off his view. This is not acceptable and Yancy is determined to go the limit to scare the potential new neighbors away. He gets drawn into the Buck and Lane fiasco when Buck's shaved off beard is discovered in the kitchen off a local restaurant.  And once again, Yancy is hoping to get his police job back if he can prove himself to the sheriff and solve the mystery of Buck and Lane's disappearance. Which leads him into the conniving arms of little miss rear-ender, Merry Mansfield.

A very satisfying story, a complex plot but told in an easy to follow style, sort of amusing in a twisted kind of way, the only thing I didn't like about it was Merry Mansfield who sends Yancy's lover from the first Yancy novel, Bad Monkey, packing. Merry Mansfield is just Hiaasen's Florida Man in a sexy female package and she set my teeth on edge.

Bad Monkey

By Carl Hiaasen

Andrew Yancy is an ex-cop. Not because he wants to be but because he did something really stupid: he sodomized his girlfriend's husband in public with a vacuum cleaner. That got him kicked out of the sheriff's department. Luckily for Yancy he was able to get a new job as Health Inspector of the local restaurants. Unluckily for Yancy, he discovers conditions in restaurant kitchens are so unwholesome and disturbing that he has totally lost his appetite and has become gaunt and skinny. For his own sake, he needs his old job  back before he wastes away to nothing. Rescue appears in the form of an unattached arm hooked by an angler. Because, despite the appearance that the owner of the arm was the victim of a shark attack, Yancy is certain that the arm's owner was murdered. If he can prove it he just might be able to get his old job with the sheriff's office back. But, since he is a character in a Hiaasen novel, Yancy is going to come up against a lot of weirdness including an ex-girlfriend who will resort to arson to win Yancy back; a sexy but a tad bit perverse new girlfriend who likes to do it on the autopsy table; a voodoo witch; a Medicare scammer and his wife; and the title character, the bad monkey who used to be a movie star but is now bald and addicted to fried foods and tobacco.

I really liked this story. Very readable, frequently funny with strange and unforgettable characters, including Driggs, the bad monkey. There really was nothing I didn't like about it including the ending where justice is served and all the bad guys get what they have coming to them. In fact, I think this is probably one of the most enjoyable of the Hiaasen's novels I have read.

For another review, see: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/06/18/books/carl-hiaasens-bad-monkey-features-a-cast-of-oddballs.html?_r=0.

Star Island

By Carl Hiaasen

Cherry Pye is a young pop star who has a serious drug and alcohol problem. Her favorite activity is getting trashed, so trashed that she often can't perform. Her excesses require frequent stints in rehab, which is not good for her image. So her handlers hired a lookalike as a stand in to cover up the seriousness of Cherry's addictions. The lookalike makes brief public appearances at parties and events while Cherry is confined to rehab.
Cherry is on the verge of releasing a new CD and is preparing for a concert in Miami. Once again, she overdoses on a crazy mixture of drugs, booze and birdseed, requiring a secret trip back to rehab. Her handlers smuggle her out of the back door of the hotel, while her double is taken out the front on a stretcher, posing as Cherry suffering from a violent attack of gastritis.
One of the score of photographers that chase after that winning celebrity candid shot is Claude Abbott. Abbott is a true fan of Cherry Pye's and, knowing her crash and burn lifestyle, he is pretty sure Cherry is about at the end of her road and he really wants to be there to cash in on her celebrity when she finally goes too far. He follows her to the rehab clinic and offers her a ride in his car when she sneaks away from the clinic. Together, they fly back to Florida and Cherry initiates sex with him (she is trashed and later doesn't remember the incident at all). But when they arrive in Florida, she drives off in a limo that has the bag containing Abbott's cameras and cell phone, leaving Abbott stranded.
Meanwhile, Cherry's double is having problems of her own. Since Cherry is supposed to be secured in rehab, the double, Ann, has been given some time off and has driven to the Florida Keys. But she crashes her rental car and finds herself captive of a strange loner called Skink. Skink used to be governor of Florida but the uncontrolled land development sent him off the deep end and he ran away, to live off the land in the swamps. He has grabbed Ann in an attempt to foil a development scheme and is using her as bait to lure the developer into his grasp. Ann eventually is released only to be captured by crazed photographer Abbott who thinks he is grabbing Cherry Pye. But when he finds out Ann is not who he thought,  he hits upon the idea of exchanging Ann for a one-day photo shoot with Cherry that he is sure will be the best work he has ever done and result in fame and acclaim and, of course, lots of money. But are Cherry's handlers all that worried about the fate of her double? Not so much, it turns out.

This was a pretty good story. Unlike some of his novels, this one does not have as many cruel and gruesome scenes, the gore limited to a shot-off finger, some ass-whipping with a weed-whacker, a spiny urchin applied to a man's testicles and one fatal shooting. That sounds like a lot, but compared to some of Hiaasen's books, it is quite toned down. It is also very entertaining and often amusing, although at times a bit chaotic. I enjoyed it and at the end of the novel he wraps up the lives of the main characters, letting you know how they ended up. That was fun and nice.

Tourist Season

By Carl Hiaasen

These anti-development terrorists start killing tourists in Florida. Their plan is to frighten people so much that they go back to where the came from: New York, Iowa, all the cold, snowy places people fled from to begin with. The terrorists want to return Florida to the natural paradise it was before it was developed.

So that's the premise of this book. We get to read about the murder of an old, helpless woman who was snatched while walking her little dog. Her crime: retiring to Florida. Her punishment: being fed alive to a crocodile.

I hated this book. It was just too callous and mean for me.

Nature Girl

By Carl Hiaasen

This books starts off wrong and keeps going wrong. At the start, a young Seminole is taking a man on a tour through the swamp. Somehow a snake falls on the man and he dies of a heart attack. So instead of reporting it to the authorities, he takes the man's body and sinks it in the ocean. So right off, the book makes no sense.
The main character, Honey Santana, is a nutcase. She hears music that isn't there and she has an over-developed sense of right and wrong that keeps landing her in trouble as she charges about on one-woman crusades to make the world safe for her son, Fry. She is supposed to be on medication but she doesn't take it and then lies about it. This headcase has custody of Fry which makes no sense. I wouldn't want this woman in charge of a baby turtle, much less a human child.
One evening, Honey gets a call from a telemarketer, Boyd Shreave. She gets upset at him because the guy calls right at the supper hour and he responds rudely. So she concocts a plan to lure this guy to Florida and teach him a lesson.
He takes the bait and travels to Florida with his lover, Eugenie Fonda, a woman with a dubious past. Honey takes Boyd and Eugenie on a camping trip in the swamp.
Meanwhile, the Seminole, Sammy Tigertail, is being haunted by the guy he dumped in the ocean. The dead man is unhappy and complains about being nibbled on by crabs and fish. To clear his head, Sammy too goes camping in the swamp. He also has a guilty conscience, and fears the cops are after him to question him about the man's disappearance. Somehow Sammy ends up sort of kidnapping a college girl who was in the area with some friends. That part of the plot didn't make any sense to me. If Sammy is trying to hide out and avoid trouble, why would he saddle himself with this loopy girl? (Just like Honey, this girl seems to live in a world of her own creation.)
Also in the swamp is a detective hired by Boyd's wife to get the goods on her errant husband. And Honey's horny ex-boss is there too, chasing after Honey. He tried to cop a feel and ended up with his fingers bitten off by crabs set on him by Honey's ex, who is still very protective of her. Another bit of stupidity in the book has the surgeon operating to reattach the digits during a power shortage and the ex-boss ends up with his pinky where his thumb should be and his thumb where a finger should be. This premise stretches credibility too far for me. No surgeon would do that, I pretty sure.
Somehow all these people, including Honey's ex and her son, Fry, end up on the same little island. Another point in the story that made no sense to me: Fry gets hurt and has a concussion and busted ribs. His father, instead of placing Fry with some responsible person to look after him, hauls him out in a boat into the swamp looking for Honey. This is just nuts. No responsible father would do that to a child suffering from a concussion and broken ribs. Anyways, people get hurt, people die, and Boyd remains a conceited ass.

Usually I really enjoy Hiaasen's stories but this one just had too many illogical events and too many coincidences. I didn't like the main character, Honey, because she is portrayed as a loving mom, but still endangers her child by refusing to take the medication that keeps her from losing touch with reality. That doesn't make her a good mom, that makes her a selfish and careless mom. Neither Honey or her ex-husband seemed to act like real parents. I just found a lot of the story unbelievable and too unrealistic and finally, uninteresting.

Review by W.R. Greer on Reviews of Books. com:   http://www.reviewsofbooks.com/nature_girl/review/.