Customer Reviews

Carl Hiaasen's South Florida Three-Book Set [Sick Puppy, Skin Tight, Stormy Weather]

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If you have never read a Hiaasen, now is the perfect time to read one. With Bushes in the White House and in Tallahassee, Hiaasen is in high order. He takes on the tawdry, vulgar and barbarian of Florida, from Cuban intolerance to Orange Bowl stupidity to the destruction of the Everglades and the ever-increasing northern immigration into the state. While in his heart he may yearn for a Florida that will never again exist he has a ruthless cynicism that will have you howling and should have most Floridians saying "How true, how true." The pity is that any part of this country that has been sold down the river to developers, raped of it's natural beauty and sold to anyone with money to donate to some local scoundrel's campaign should have a Hiaasen. To say that these are three of his very very best is impossible because each one I finish becomes my favorite until the next one comes out (he produces a new novel about every two to three years and while you are waiting you can always go back to the beginning--Tourist Season--and start all over again.) Of these three, Stormy Weather is my favorite. It is his view of the second "hurricane" of charlatans, rednecks, insurance peddlers and assorted thieves and scoundrels that invaded southern Florida after the big hurricane--Andrew--leveled the territory in the 90's. Hiaasen's style is the modified murder(s) mystery--you know whodunit immediately but the fun comes in tracking down the bad guys and in the knife sharp jibes he takes at all things along the way. Hiassen is a columnist for the Miami Herald--one of the nation's great newspapers--and he goes after local politicians and blowhards with the same gusto that you will find in his books. Some refer to his writing as within the genre of Southern Florida writers--Buchanan, Macdonald are two other examples--but each is unique in his or her own style. Of the three, Hiassen is the sassiest, the boldest, the one who makes me laugh until tears cloud my reading over and over again. Skin Tight is about a portrait of the plastic surgery business in Florida and he approaches the subject with a very sharp scalpel; Sick Puppy is pure GOP at the current time, if you have read about the "game preserves" that are being stocked in Texas so weekend big game hunters can go out and shoot something wild--but in captivity. I do not mean to suggest that Hiaasen is Republican or Democrat necessarily--he finds plenty of rascals in both camps. Please, please, please read just one of his books--you won't be able to pass the next one by and if you have never read any of his books, I envy you--you have hours and hours of pure reading pleasure (as they say) to enjoy.