Customer Reviews

Double Whammy

5 star:		(51)
4 star:		(22)
3 star:		(7)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

I stumbled across one of those bass fishing shows a few days before I read this book. I couldn't believe people would sit around and watch people fish! But they do. And Hiaasen had a ball writing about it, too.

This book has so many great moments. Skink and the poodle is one of the funniest things I've ever read. I laughed so hard, tears streamed down my face. I called a friend and tried to read the scene over the phone, but I couldn't stop laughing. It's all right, my friend knew I was crazy. He rushed out and bought the book, though! The pit bull in the trailer park scene and the aftermath is also priceless. I guess this is Hiaasen's dog book as well as his fish book.

Needless to say, if you haven't read Hiaasen, start with this one. You'll be hooked.

Carl Hiaasen has taken wonderfully wacky characters such as Skink, a mystery giant who wears a glass eye retrieved from a stuffed owl and who dines on road kill, and has turned them into individuals that you have to love. Hiassen's villians, while bad, will capture the reader's imaginations with their total ineptude.

This is the first book that I have read by Hiaasen, but the outrageous humor contained in the twists and turns of the plot, centered around a bass fishing tournament, have convinced me to read his other works.

Although this was the funniest book I believe I have ever read, Hiaasen, makes his real message, enviornmental destruction, loud and clear and if the reader is not an enviornmentalist before reading the book, there is a good chance s/he will put the book down believing there is work to be done in saving our county, whether it be the swamp lands that Hiaasen weaves into his tale, or perhaps the mountains or lakes in our own back yards!

This is also my favorite of the Hiaasen books, with Native Tongue and Tourist Season following. Hiaasen has a fabulous sense of chaos and absurdity. My husband and I laugh aloud at the bizarre events and characters that people his world. But there's enough underlying grit to make it all weirdly real, and definitely the underlying humanity to make it moving.

My first Hiaasen and an example of how useful reviews (reading other people's reviews) can be. I found out about Hiaasen by reading someone else's review of a Tim Dorsey book. As a matter of fact, a good number of books I have read recently are books that other people said were good and judging by previous books they reviewed, it looked like they had tastes similar to mine.

About the book...this is pure reading entertainment. Hiaasen's wicked imagination is what makes the book so interesting. He's written a typical mystery but the venue and the characters are anything but typical (television evangelism and professional bass fishing). Hiaasen spends so much time with character development that it is impossible not to feel an attachment to these crazy people and concern for the impossible situations in which he puts them. Everyone knows that the people who fish, regularly lie about the fish they caught and the ones that got away, but in Double Whammy the men on the professional bass fishing circuit have stepped it up a notch by cheating and murdering to cover up their cheating.

These characters are all larger than life and the stunts they pull are zany and over the top, but amongst all the fun, there is a real social message here that Hiaasen is able to pull off without being offensive.

Laugh out loud funny in spots and humorous nearly throughout. It was a joy to read!

I like to space my serious reads out and delve into a little escapism once in a while. This is great escapism, hilarious characters and scenarios, and extremely readable. The only issue I had with this one was excessive use of poetic license and direct contradictions. I know little about the pro-fishing circuit, so that's not my beef. Terribly amusing, but not as endearing as the excellent Stormy Weather, or Lucky You, where the endings come together much cleaner (If you read this book, you'll see what I mean when you witness contradictions and great implausibility in the final tournament).

Making a novel about fishing entertaining is a mammoth task, but Hiaasen has achieved just that. Double Whammy doesn't start off as fast a pace as his other novels but once ex governor now wilderness living hermit Skink comes on the scene the pace quickens and never drops off. Fans of this character from some of his later novels will learn how one of his most interesting facial features happened. I won't give away what that characteristic is for those who have not read those novels or are reading this as a stand alone but for those who have read newer adventures it is really interesting to know, and purchasing Double Whammy to read how it happened is worth the price alone.

Police officer Jim Tyle from most novels with skink is back in this one too as well as Officer Garcia from the novel Striptease. Queenie the world's biggest Bass, some dim-witted fishing tv show hosts with huge egos, a shonky on air priest/Floridian property developer and a low IQ'd hit man who forms a close relationship with a bulldog accompany private R.J. Decker in making this a memorable read.

Whilst Skink and other characters may have become more developed in later novels this is still a sensational read. Also check out Hiaasen's masterpieces Sick Puppy, Hoot, Skinny Dip, Striptease, Lucky You and others as well.

Hiaasen tackles the high-stakes world of tournament bass fishing in this romp through Harney County, Florida. RJ Decker is a photographer-turned-PI who gets hired by rich brat Dennis Gault to catch TV bass-fishing star Dickie Lockhart in the act of cheating during a tournament. Meanwhile, avid bass fisherman Bobby Clinch winds up dead, leaving behind a relieved widow and an orange Corvette-driving girlfriend, Lanie Gault, Dennis Gault's sleazy sister. When Dickie Lockhart is found floating in a fish tank in New Orleans after a tournament, all hell breaks loose. RJ turns to his odd new friends, the swamp-dwelling Skink, state trooper Jim Tile, and Cuban detective Al Garcia, rounding it out with his ex-wife Catherine, while they untangle a string of murders. They're pitted against the Gaults, the cops, some bizarre redneck thugs, and the leadership of the Outdoor Christian Network, with a backdrop of televised bass fishing and some grisly happenings to pave the way.

Though not as laugh-out-loud funny as "Stormy Weather," "Double Whammy" was a highly entertaining read that did make me laugh out loud. It's hard not to love the whole cast of good guys while sniggering at the idiotic, evil bad guys. This one is four-star entertainment.

If I told you this book was just about bass fishing, you probably wouldn't read it. Thankfully, there is more to it than that. R.J. Decker is a private detective that finds himself in the office of Dennis Gault, a flashy and rich businessman that likes to fish for bass. Decker can't believe he is being offered $50,000 to try and prove that one of Gault's competitors, Dickie Gault, is cheating in bass tournaments. After putting up with Gault's attitude, Decker takes the job and the adventure begins in Carl Hiassen's 'Double Whammy.'

More than anything, what makes this novel enjoyable are the characters. Decker is surrounded by an unusual ensemble. 'Skink' is a swamp hermit with a mysterious past, and teaches Decker all about bass fishing. Skink also has a fondness for road kill that makes the other characters squeemish. Reverend Weems is hardly a surprising character given all the "bad" news about religious figures in recent years, but makes a nice partner for the cheating and impish Lockhart. Other law enforcement officers, Decker's ex-wife, and Gault's seductive, gold-digging sister round out the cast.

There is probably more bass fishing, or more about bass fishing, than the casual reader will want to know about. However, the bass fishing details do take a back seat to the mystery that surrounds the mysterious deaths of several secondary characters. The mystery is rather short lived, but the 'sting' that Decker and his comrades plan in the second half of the novel carry the story to a satisfactory conclusion.

I'd recommend this novel to anyone that enjoys crime fiction in the style of Hiassen and Elmore Leonard, or a style that might be described as Dave Barry light. Hiassen is unrelentless in his attack on the condo craze in Florida and what it has done to the environment there, so be ready for some commentary as well.

"Double Whammy" continues to build the case that it is impossible for Carl Hiaasen to write anything that is not brutally entertaining. For as prolific and Hiaasen is, one gets the impression that he still can't write fast enough to keep up with the wacky content streaming from Florida's zany residents. Hiaasen's talent lies in his unique ability to extract these nuggets of the bizarre from everyday life, and spin around them stories that while cynically and darkly hilarious, still have a ring of truth and reality.

In "Double Whammy", Hiaasen takes on a pair of unlikely bedfellows: professional bass fishing and TV evangelism. R.J. Decker is the `hero", but true to the author's anything-but-conventional approach to fiction, this hero is an ex-con with a hair-trigger temper who lives in a trailer park. But compared to the road kill-eating hermit, "Skink", he pals around with, Decker by comparison is a rock of sanity and normalcy. To this throw in an assorted cast of oily Florida bass-fishing millionaires, a corrupt Jimmy Swaggart-like TV preacher, a pair of Florida redneck murderous brothers, and the pro-bass fishing tournament crowd all slogging through black-water swamps and drainage ditches. Bodies pile up, but typical of Hiaasen fair, even as the creative brutality of the murders accelerates, the reader is more likely to chuckle than cringe. The dialogue is harp and witty, the pace relentless.

In short, a manic and imaginative ride through Florida's backwaters that could only come from Carl Hiaasen's twisted but insightful mind. Entertainment at its finest.

My First Carl Hiaasen book and definitely not my last. Who'd have thought that Bass Fishing could be so interesting?...and come to think of it, who'd have thought that Bass Fishing could have so much dirt and subterfuge going on behind the scenes.

Hiaasen really brings the whole tournament, and reasons for it, alive. All over America thousands of Bass fishermen head out for the water each weekend in search of the ultimate 'Hawg'. Their fishing, their lures, their equipment all add loving, and at times, hilarious, detail to this nice little murder mystery.

Set in Florida, this has ex-photographer, and private investigator RJ Decker hired by the extremely unlikeable Dennis Gault to find out how top Bass Fisherman Dickie Lockhart is managing to cheat at tournaments.

It turns out the stakes are a lot higher than this. Lockhart is sponsored by the Outdoor Christian Network, and its sleazy owner. There is murder and nepotism afoot and people are turning up mysteriously dead.

At the back of all this is the Skink - or Captain, as he insists on being called. He lives the life of a hermit in the back of a Florida town, and enjoys eating Fresh road kill. He is insistent that people who come visit him also enjoy eating fresh road kill. Underneath his eccentric exterior is a resourceful and cunning person who manages to supervise a great ending to this - figuring who did what to whom and why. And in a hilarious finale, getting a black cop and a hispanic cop to join on all-white Florida Bass fishing tournament as brothers - and catch the only fish.

I was surprised at just how readable this was. Sometimes it is difficult to get hold of books you just read - that grip your imagination and tickle your funny bone. I found this one of those. I couldn't predict where it was going to go, or how it was going to end. And even up to the last moment there was still an unpredictable twist to it. The plot had good twists and turns through it and a great cast of characters to push it along.