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Skin Tight

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This intro to the book's unconventional "hero," Mick Stranahan, is just the tip of the iceberg as way-out characters go. Stranahan, formerly with the Florida State Attorney's office, now "retired" at their request, lives in Biscayne Bay in Stiltsville, where he is the only full-time resident. When a hit-man invades his home for reasons unknown, Mick kills him with the only "weapon" at hand--a stuffed marlin head--then drops him back into the bay.

Before long, Mick--and the reader--are up to their eyeballs in craziness. The case of a young woman who disappeared four years ago after undergoing a nose job may be at the center of this wild plot. Her plastic surgeon, Dr. Rudy Graveline, manages to have Hollywood actresses beating a path to his door, but is apparently a complete fraud who has not performed real surgery in years. Reynaldo Flemm, a Geraldo Rivera clone, is doing an investigation of the surgeon, and he has interviewed his former nurse, thereby endangering her life. As Mick becomes involved in all these crazy plots, he is pursued by a second mob hitman, this one seven feet tall, with a skin problem and a face that even major surgery cannot fix.

As the violence and the body count rise, author Carl Hiaasen keeps the absurdities coming, and his satire of Florida, the entertainment industry, the plastic surgery "industry," and even the New Jersey mob never flags. Laugh-out-loud funny, this 1989 novel captures universal "truths," and is still as irreverent and as timely as it was when it was written. n Mary Whipple

The Downhill Lie: A Hacker's Return to a Ruinous Sport
Basket Case
Native Tongue
Nature Girl
Skinny Dip
Paradise Screwed: Selected Columns of Carl Hiaasen