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Fiction. Literature. Mystery. Humor (Fiction.) HTML:Chaz Perrone might be the only marine scientist in the world who doesn’t know which way the Gulf Stream runs. He might also be the only one who went into biology just to make a killing, and now he’s found a way–doctoring water samples so that a ruthless agribusiness tycoon can continue illegally dumping fertilizer into the endangered Everglades. When Chaz suspects that his wife, Joey, has figured out his scam, he pushes her overboard from a cruise liner into the night-dark Atlantic. Unfortunately for Chaz, his wife doesn’t die in the fall. Clinging blindly to a bale of Jamaican pot, Joey Perrone is plucked from the ocean by former cop and current loner Mick Stranahan. Instead of rushing to the police and reporting her husband’s crime, Joey decides to stay dead and (with Mick’s help) screw with Chaz until he screws himself. As Joey haunts and taunts her homicidal husband, as Chaz’s cold-blooded cohorts in pollution grow uneasy about his ineptitude and increasingly erratic behavior, as Mick Stranahan discovers that six failed marriages and years of island solitude haven’t killed the reckless romantic in him, we’re taken on a hilarious, full-throttle, pure Hiaasen ride through the warped politics and mayhem of the human environment, and the human heart.… (more)
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Forunately for her Joey was a champion diver and instinct takes over as she plunges towards the ocean. Joey is rescued after almost 24 hours in the water and decides to wreak her own vengeance on Chaz.
SKINNY DIP is a strange mix of crime fiction and light humour. It seems to me written with half an eye on a screen version. Episodic chapters are populated by larger than life characters, with sometimes humorous overtones. And yet the content is serious enough. Chaz, as far as he is concerned, has murdered his wife, and later on goes on to demonstrate his ineptitude by trying to murder two other people. Chaz has one main focus in life: sex. His attempts to prove his virility and to increase his vigor through little blue pills are increasingly unsuccessful. Most of the action takes place against the backdrop of the pollution of the Everglades. Joey's brother flies in from New Zealand, getting to Florida in what seems to me to be remarkably quick time, having been alerted by Joey to her attempted murder. He holds a memorial service for Joey designed to make Chaz even more unhinged.
There were two characters who stick in the mind.
Karl Rolvaag, the cop whose investigation it becomes, is convinced that Chaz is the key to Joey's disappearance. All Karl wants to do get away from Florida and go back up north. He keeps two pet pythons who are missing for much of the book, presumably on the loose in the condominium where he lives in disharmony with other residents whose small pets go missing.
The pick of the bunch is Tool, an intellectually challenged giant who is engaged by Chaz's employer as a minder. He is addicted to morphine and raids hospitals for the aged to acquire morphine patches. On one such excursion he has a life changing experience when he meets and falls for Maureen, an eighty year old waiting to die.
So does the mix work? Well yes, it does in a way. There were bits that made me smile, but for me the action could have moved just a bit faster. But then I read for mystery and crime rather than for humour. SKINNY DIP may tickle your fancy just a bit more than it did mine.
Carl Hiaasen books are quick, funny reads with a soul. Skinny Dip is full of quirky characters (such as Tool, the bodyguard with a bullet lodged in the crack of his ass and a penchant for collecting roadside crosses; Red Hammernut, the Yosemite Sam like billionaire making big profit off of thwarting EPA rules; Ricca, Chaz's mistress who has, shall we say, some peculiar artistic tendencies when it comes to personal grooming), implausible plot lines, and witty dialogue. However, for all of the absurdity, there is an underlying environmental message about the Everglades and how big money and political influence can circumvent the very agencies who are trying to do right by our planet. The message is never preachy; Hiaasen simply uses the characters and the plot to point out how corporate corruption is going on beneath our very noses and how industrial farming's mismanagement of natural resources is making itself felt in our water supply, our land, and in the animals who inhabit the very ecosystems we're destroying. However, if you're not looking for an environmental message, that's cool--still consider giving Hiaasen a try. There are plenty of zany capers, madcap adventures, and fun to be had.
* South Florida setting? Check.
* Sexy, but
* Evil scum bent on ruining South Florida for his own financial gain? Check.
* Reluctant hero with an extremely unorthodox way of doing things? Check.
* Lurch-like bizarro character who deep, deep, deep, deep down really has a heart-of-gold? Check.
In his latest novel, Skinny Dip, Hiaasen wraps all those elements around the story of an on-the-take biologist who throws his pro-environment wife off a cruise ship because he suspects her of knowing about his fudging of phosphate numbers in the Everglades. Except, unbeknownst to him, the wife (a former star swimmer) survives and, as luck would have it, washes up on the secluded ramshackle island of a detective who was kicked off the force for not doing things by-the-book. Since they're pretty sure they can't prove to a jury that her smooth-talking husband tried to kill her, they decide to make his life a living hell by tormenting him until he either cracks up or ends up face down in his scummy over-polluted swamp.
So, yes, it was somewhat predictable. But it was also extremely funny and a very quick read, and after finishing a dry Ben Franklin bio and a downer of an Anne Tyler novel, I needed something light that would provide a few laughs. Hiaasen moves you so quickly through the book and throws in so many funny lines that you don't care that you know all along where the story is taking you, you're just happy to be along for the ride.
I found this book by a circuitous route while searching for something a little lighter than normal that my face to face book group hadn't read before. I tried half a dozen books that I was assured are humours and found, not surprisingly, that it's not only beauty that 'tis in the eye of the beholder.
I wouldn't describe the book as laugh out loud funny but it did have me smiling a most of the time. I can't think of another book to compare it to but it reminded me of one of my favourite movies, Fargo. It's the same kind of satire and has the same delicious inevitability in the unfolding downfall of the loser husband. The people who populate the book, good and bad alike, are larger than life and full of eccentricities but are credible within the context of the story. Most of them are also very, very likeable. Even the guy who collects roadside death markers.
Even though I'm something of an ageing hippy I found the environmental overtones a bit obvious but they're a minor feature of the book so not too much of a problem. Despite what it says on the book jacket I don't know that it qualifies as crime fiction (there's not much of a puzzle after all) but it's a sharply written romp of a yarn in the best sense of the word and offers that totally satisfying feeling that comes from a bad guy getting what's coming to him.
The summary was not to disappoint. I loved reading through this book, delighted
I finished it right away, told everyone I knew to read it, and later realized that it had hit the bestseller charts and was being talking about everywhere. I had no idea that it would be such a hit when I first bought it, but I didn’t know who Hiaasen was either.
When I learned that his next book, “Nature Girl” was going to be hitting the selves, I planned on buying it right away. I got it, and now it’s waiting in my bookshelf to be read (I’m planning on starting it next week).
Some may say it’s fluffy, but in reality, it’s just fun literature.
Now Joey must find out why her husband tried to kill her so she can figure out how to exact her revenge.
I liked the book okay. It was funny and irreverent. But I think there was a little too much sex talk for my taste (my, being a children's librarian has turned me into a prude... must remedy that!).
Skinny Dip was my first time reading a novel by Carl Hiaasen, and I must say that it definitely won't be my last. I loved Hiaasen's humour and use of irony through out the book. His characters are so vivid and honest it is hard not to enjoy even the most moral-lacking villain.
Corbett Wheeler are the orphaned children of a pair of extremely wealthy
globetrotters, killed in a plane crash when their children were little.
After dealing with the larcenous attitude of their aunt who raised
them (and wanted to get
Corbett decides to move to New Zealand to raise sheep and steer clear of
most humans. Joey decides to live a modest life and not let many know
about her fortune.
Joey winds up marrying one Dr. Chaz Perrone, a completely mercenary
lecherous villain, but one who convinces her that he loves her and only
her. (You wonder, along with Joey, how such a sensible heroine could
possibly have been that dumb.) It doesn't take her long to figure out
that he's not very trustworthy, but her nature causes her to look for
the good in people and overlook glaring faults for as long as she can.
For their second anniversary, Chaz books a dream cruise through the
Caribbean, a chance for them to "reconnect." He connects with her, all
right. His hands connect with her ankles just before he flips her up
and over the side of the ship in the middle of a rainy night. If she
hadn't been a champion diver in college, the fall itself would have
killed her.
But it doesn't. Nor does she drown or get eaten by sharks in the water.
Parched, exhausted, totally naked and nearly dead, she is plucked from
the water hours later by Mick Stranahan in a skiff. Mick is a former
police investigator, forcibly retired after a couple of questionable
deaths, who is living on a small secluded island, south of the Florida Keys.
What follows is one of the funniest, most rollicking tales I've read in
a loooooonnnnnggggggg time. Joey just can't figure out why her husband
wanted to kill her, but she's determined to find out. Mick goes along
for the ride because life gets rather boring on that island and he's
between women right now, so why not? His police background serves him
well in this escapade. Joey takes her brother, Corbett, and her best
friend, Rose (they are members of a book club! LOL) into her confidence
and enlists them in her intricate and involved web of sweet revenge.
Chaz is delectably hateful. His slimy cohorts in subterfuge and crime
are deliciously written, from the Neandrathal Earl Edward O'Toole (a
huge, stupid hunk of meat with surprisingly clear morals and a bullet
lodged in the crack of his butt) to the corporate swine,
cracker-turned-crooked-millionaire Sam Hammernut, a more plain spoken
character I've seldom come across. Chaz is blissfully unaware that the
wife he flipped of the deck of that ship isn't dead after all, and he
completely rids their home of all traces that Joey ever existed. But he
begins to think he's going nuts when she starts sneaking into their home
and moving things around, leaving her things here and there, setting him
up for the complete "Gas Light" treatment. Watching him slowly
self-destruct was great.
There are some other delightful characters in here, too, like Karl
Volvaag, the police investigator and transplanted Minnesotan with an
affinity for large reptiles; Ricca, the hairdresser who's been fooling
with Chaz behind Joey's back for months; and a variety of lesser
characters who make a lasting impression on you.
The story culminates in one of the most satisfying confrontations I've
read in a long time when Joey finally reveals herself, and the bad guys
all get what's coming to them and the good guys live happily ever after.
I really enjoyed this one and will be looking for others written by
this author. His writing style is one of the most entertaining ones
I've seen in a long time, and the south Florida area is his stomping
grounds, so he knows it quite well, and it shows. This one gets a 5.
Skinny dip is more like a crime drama than his other books so if you like that genre then this should seem really good. Overall, I think this book is fun, attractive, amusing, engaging.