Skinny Dip [Import] [Paperback]

Carl Hiaasen (Author)

Product Details

• Paperback: 480 pages
• Publisher: Grand Central Pub; Large Print Ed edition (2006)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 055277393X
• ISBN-13: 978-0552773935
• Product Dimensions: 7.6 x 5 x 1.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 12 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.1 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (371 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #8,782,695 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Carl Hiaasen was born and raised in Florida, where he still lives with his incredibly tolerant family and numerous personal demons.

A graduate of the University of Florida, at age 23 he joined The Miami Herald as a general assignment reporter and went on to work for the paper's weekly magazine and later its prize-winning investigations team. Since 1985 Hiaasen has been writing a regular column, which at one time or another has pissed off just about everybody in South Florida, including his own bosses. He has outlasted almost all of them, and his column still appears on most Sundays in The Herald's opinion-and-editorial section. It may be viewed online at www.miamiherald.com or in the actual printed edition of the newspaper, which, miraculously, is still being published.

For his journalism and commentary, Hiaasen has received numerous state and national honors, including the Damon Runyon Award from the Denver Press Club. His work has also appeared in many well-known magazines, including Sports Illustrated, Playboy, Time, Life, Esquire and, most improbably, Gourmet.

In the early 1980s, Hiaasen began writing novels with his good friend and distinguished journalist, the late William D. Montalbano. Together they produced three mystery thrillers -- Powder Burn, Trap Line and Double Whammy -- which borrowed heavily from their own reporting experiences.

Tourist Season, published in 1986, was Hiaasen's first solo novel. GQ magazine called it "one of the 10 best destination reads of all time," although it failed to frighten a single tourist away from Florida, as Hiaasen had hoped it might. His next effort, Double Whammy, was the first (and possibly the only) novel about sex, murder and corruption on the professional bass-fishing circuit.

Since then, Hiaasen has published nine others -- Skin Tight, Native Tongue, Strip Tease, Stormy Weather, Lucky You, Sick Puppy, Basket Case, Skinny Dip, The Downhill Lie and Nature Girl. Hiaasen made his children's book debut with Hoot (2002), which was awarded a Newbery Honor and spent more than two years on the New York Times bestseller lists. For young readers he went on to write the bestselling Flush (2005) and, most recently Scat (January 2009). The film version of Hoot was released in 2006, directed by Wil Shriner and produced by Jimmy Buffett and Frank Marshall. ("Hoot" is now available on DVD).

Hiaasen is also responsible for Team Rodent (1998), a wry but unsparing rant against the Disney empire and its creeping grip on the American entertainment culture. In 2008, Hiaasen came back to nonfiction with The Downhill Lie: A Hacker's Return to a Ruinous Sport. The book chronicles his harrowing and ill-advised reacquaintance with golf after a peaceful, 32-year absence.

Together, Hiaasen's novels have been published in 34 languages, which is 33 more than he is able to read or write. Still, he has reason to believe that all the foreign translations are brilliantly faithful to the original work. The London Observer has called him "America's finest satirical novelist," while Janet Maslin of the New York Times has compared him to Preston Sturges, Woody Allen and S.J. Perelman. Hiaasen re-reads those particular reviews no more than eight or nine times a day.

To prove that he doesn't just make up all the sick stuff in his fiction, Hiaasen has also published two collections of his newspaper columns, Kick A** and Paradise Screwed, both courageously edited by Diane Stevenson and faithfully kept in print by the University Press of Florida.

One of Hiaasen's previous novels, Strip Tease, became a major motion-picture in 1996 starring Demi Moore, and directed by Andrew Bergman. Despite what some critics said, Hiaasen continues to insist that the scene featuring Burt Reynolds slathered from his neck to his toes with Vaseline is one of the high points in modern American cinema.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

95 of 107 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Hilarious, Satiric Crime Fiction! A Great Summer Read!!, August 15, 2004

By 

Jana L. Perskie "ceruleana" (New York, NY USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Skinny Dip (Hardcover)

"Skinny Dip" may be the best beach read of the summer! Carl Hiaasen's satire and dark humor do wonders for crime fiction. He turns out the most extraordinarily eccentric characters: the stripper sister-in-law; a quirky environmentalist nephew; the has-been writer neighbor; evil scoundrels who are beyond redemption; Tool, a hulking but kinda lovable brute, who is the villain's heavy; a trashy mistress; and resilient victims who give as good as they get...or better! Set in South Florida, Hiaasen highlights the area's nuttiness and some of the weird folks who inhabit that corner of our country. Not one character could be considered "normal" in this novel, but behind strange facades beat good hearts.

Joey Perrone, the almost-murdered wife of corrupt Charles "Chaz" Perrone, makes it back to shore after her husband tosses her overboard a cruise ship, far off Key West's coast. He must have underestimated Joey's talents. She's a former swim star. And thanks to a floating bale of marijuana and the assistance of Mick Stranahan, a burnt-by-love ex-cop, she doesn't sink. Oh no! Joey lives for pay-back.

Chaz, an incompetent marine biologist, (he doesn't even know which direction the Gulf Stream flows in), has long been on the take from agribusiness tycoon Red Hammernut, (great name!), who's been dumping fertilizer into the endangered Everglades. He thinks that Joey has discovered that he's been exchanging clean-water samples for the actual tainted water that is the result of Hammernut's environmental pollution. But his wife doesn't have a clue about the scam.

The lovely, curvaceous Joey recovers her strength, mental and physical, at the island home of her gallant rescuer Mike, who is the victim of six failed marriages. Instead of going to the police, however, she decides to play dead. She persuades Mike to help her mess with Chaz's mind while she figures out why he tried to kill her.

This is a fast paced, fun, often hilarious read with wonderful characters...and humor galore, if you laugh at dark things and enjoy farce mixed with your suspense. I really enjoyed it.

JANA

76 of 91 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Mick Stranahan returns, July 31, 2004

By 

Frank J. Konopka (Shamokin, PA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Skinny Dip (Hardcover)

Carl Hiaasen must surely be a rather demented person. Anyone who can come up with such wacky plots, not to mention the continually offbeat characters that polulate his novels is either a genius, or an idiot savant! His latest tickled my funny bone, as all of his books do. If South Florida is really anything like the place he writes about in his novels, I'm glad I've never spent any time visiting there. Even the throwaway characters are bizarre, as for example the parents of our story's heroine, who (the parents) died in a very unusual airplane crash. We have hairy strongarm men, redneck millionaires out to cheat the government, misplaced Norwegian policemen longing for snow, and a myriad of other folks crawling off the pages of this book. Of course, we welcome the return of Mick Stranahan, who was last seen in "Skin Tight", another of the author's wierd tales. I don't want to discuss the plot, because it is hilarious, but there are two captive pythons in the book, in addition to an elderly female cancer patient who turns a bad man into a somewhat good guy. Just one word of warning: if you go near the South Florida swamps, beware the Captain!!!

29 of 33 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars AN IRESISTIBLE BLEND OF MIRTH AND MURDER, July 13, 2004

By 

Gail Cooke (TX, USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Skinny Dip (Hardcover)

Carl Hiaasen's tenth foray into an irresistible blend of mirth and murder is emblematic of his previous work (Sick Puppy, Lucky You, Strip Tease, Stormy Weather, Basket Case). In other words, Skinny Dip is a doozy! Satire, suspense and laugh out loud outre characters are this author's forte - lucky for us.

Reminiscent of moonlight over Miami our story opens on a cruise ship. Joey Perrone and her husband of two years, Chaz, are celebrating their anniversary on the Sun Duchess from out of Port Everglades bound for Puerto Rico, Nassau, and a private Bahamian island owned by the cruise ship company. Their voyage had a less than auspicious beginning as it was delayed for three hours because an angry raccoon was loose in the pastry kitchen. Once the varmint was dispatched they were off - and so was Joey.

After filling his wife's wine glass four time at dinner Chaz suggested a romantic stroll on deck. Their walk was short as once by the rail he pretended to drop their stateroom key. Bending over he didn't find the key but Joey's ankles which he grabbed, upending her into the black Atlantic.

As Joey (former champion swimmer at UCLA) fought the waves she thought, "I had a feeling he didn't love me anymore, but this is ridiculous."

Now, this is a girl who comes from sturdy stock. Her parents, Hank and Lana Wheeler, ran a casino resort in Nevada featuring a Russian dancing bear act overseen by "a semi-retired dominatrix who billed herself as Ursa Major." When one of the bears developed an impacted bicuspid the Wheelers offered to fly him to a periodontic veterinarian at Lake Tahoe. Better still they decided to go along with Ursa and the bear - bad choice. The jet crashed with no survivors, leaving Joey with a cool 4 million.

She moved to Florida at that time where she met her first husband, a stockbroker. The pair were happily wed for four years until a sky diver whose parachute didn't open fell on him. Joey is widowed but richer because of the settlement from the sky diving company.

Next came Chaz - this lady is definitely not lucky in love. She has no idea why Chaz would try to do her in. He has one very good idea - he believes she knows that he's doctoring water samples which allows a greedy polluter to go on dumping fertilizer into the Everglades. Since Chaz is an unscrupulous maggot (an understatement) he has no choice but to render Joey speechless. He feels no remorse whatsoever, only satisfaction that is wife is dead.

Problem is she's not. Joey manages to hang onto a floating bale of grass, "Sixty pounds of Jamaica's finest," until she's found by ex policeman Mick Stranahan. Well, there's just so much a woman can take. Joey's happy to be alive, but decides not to let her husband know it. With Stranahan's help she'll play dead and drive Chaz crazy.

We could say, "And this is where the fun begins," but, truth is, in typical Hiaasen style we've had a great deal of fun already. From the opening paragraph to page 355 of "Skinny Dip" laughter abounds. Someone has said "Carl Hiaasen is so good he ought to be illegal." Right on!

- Gail Cooke