Customer Reviews

Skinny Dip

5 star:		(187)
4 star:		(97)
3 star:		(51)
2 star:		(22)
1 star:		(14)

 

 

"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

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!!!

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

Florida is a unique state. It is the number one tourist destination in the world with more theme parks and pristine beaches than just about anywhere else. However, it also is quickly being overdeveloped and if you believe Carl Hiaasen, it is due to greedy and unscrupulous individuals. However, Hiaasen makes them out to be cruel and ridiculous characters whose greed will lead to their inevitable demise. The fun for the reader is watching them self destruct.
The latest Hiaasen antihero is Chaz Perrone who for no explicable reason throws his wife off an upper deck of a cruise ship in a vain attempt to kill her. His wife, Joey, survives and with the help of her rescuer and new friend, former cop and hermit Mick Stranahan, try to come up with answers while exacting their revenge.
So many authors try for humor. However, in many instances they try too hard and it becomes quite forced while the plot lags. Hiaasen is the measure of what ingredients go into making the best humorous novels in the mystery genre today. The strength of his work are several. First, the plot is always interesting comically reflecting abnormal behavior in what should be routine situations. In this case taking a cruise vacation. Second, the characters are truly outrageous and unforgettable. The wackiest in this story is Troy, a very large man hired to protect Chaz. He has a bullet stuck in his buttocks which causes him severe pain requiring him to steal pain medicine in the form of adhesive Band-Aids from local nursing homes. Chaz comes in at a close second. He is incredibly self centered worried more about his potency than the well being of his wife or girlfriend. He is a marine biologist who hates marine life as well as biology. Why he does it remains the mystery. Of course it is the act of throwing his wife off the ship that begins his eventual demise. On top of all this is an ecological warning about saving the Everglades and a riveting plot occasionally interrupted by truly hilarious lunacy. Many try but nobody does funny like Carl Hiaasen.

One of the best of Hiaasen's tragicomic South Florida capers. This time around, Hiaasen's gallery of grotesques and eccentrics includes a couple of return appearances: retired / disabled investigator and island-dwelling loner Mick Shanahan (last seen in Skin Tight) plays an important role, and even the ever-recurring Skink, former Florida governor and current Everglades-dwelling, roadkill-eating wingnut, makes a couple of cameos.

Add to these the corrupt and murderous, outlandishly oversexed, but comically incompetent, wildlife biologist Chaz Perrone; the brutish and bizarrely hirsute thug Tool, who unexpectedly feels pangs of conscience; the politically super-connected agricultural mogul and eco-villain Red Hammernut, who doesn't; a Columbo from Minnesota who is given exactly a week to solve a murder; a couple of murder victims who won't die; a couple of pythons that terrorize housepets; a blackmail scheme involving a fake will, a fake funeral, and a sheep-farmer from New Zealand -- well, it's all pretty nuts. It's also a lot of fun, and it's vintage Hiaasen. Enjoy.

As always with Hiaasen, underneath the laughs here are a lot of anger and sadness. He makes the reader uneasy about the fate of our rapidly disappearing wilderness. His usual culprits are land developers, corrupt politicians and judges, carpetbaggers, and sometimes, promoters and tourists (e.g., Tourist Season). This time, he skewers as corrupted by corporate greed the scientific establishment that supposedly is trying to save what little is left of the Everglades. Let's hope his books awaken some sense of urgency or shame in the powers that be. On the other hand, let's not hold our breaths.

My first book by Hiaasen and it won't be my last. I read this in a day and a half. It had me laughing out loud too and hard to put down. Even the poor hapless perp turned victam Chaz had a warped sense of humor. Everyone got their just desserts.

Requiring slightly more effort than your average murder mystery, this book is so darkly funny and offbeat that you hardly notice it rambling on a little longer than necessary.

Taking a different approach, we learn "whodunit" at the very beginning, and spend several chapters figuring out the "whydunit".

Hiaasen bestows almost every unlikable characteristic possible on his leading villain, Charles "Chaz" Perrone, an appearance obsessed, smooth-talking, selfish, insecure, horn-dog, lazy, pseudo-intellectual biostitute with a dark secret.

Unfortunately for Chaz, his perfect murder backfires, as he proves conclusively that he is spectacularly inept in that department.

Stubbornly refusing to die according to plan, his victim clings to life via a passing bale of Jamaica's finest, and is fortuitously rescued by former policeman Mick Stranahan, who whisks his catch away to his island home.

From this moment, Chaz' perfect life takes a dramatic swing, and the blue "dysfunction" pills can only solve one of his many problems. He soon discovers that he hasn't got the testicular fortitude for recent events, and starts falling to pieces.

Although highly implausible, full of coincidences, and overly long, the colorful characters and graphic imagery combine with the dark humor to make this worthwhile, if rather light reading.

Amanda Richards, January 8, 2005

Taking a page from John D. MacDonald, Carl Hiaasen uses the Everglades as a backdrop for this comic novel. Marine scientist Chaz Perrone has been taking bribes from an agri-businessman to fake his biological tests of the great Florida swamp. On a second honeymoon cruise with his wife, who he feared had discovered his phony reports, he throws her overboard. What he hadn't counted on was that this champion swimmer would be able to make it to shore. The rest of the novel involves a revenge motif.

I've read one previous Hiassen novel, STORMY WEATHER. I thought the characters were over-the-top, but I got this one for practically nothing so I thought I'd give him another try. I was pleasantly surprised in some respects. Joey Perrone had me at "hello" and her fifty-three-year-old rescuer and former cop Mick Stranahan had me hoping the old guy would get the girl. My favorite character, however, was homicide detective Karl Rolvaag (an inside joke for anyone from Minnesota) who hates Florida and its oppressive humidity and can't wait to get back to Minnesota. Rolvaag provides authentic humor as he owns a pair of albino pythons who drive his neighbors to distraction. At one point the pythons escape and Rolvaag is blamed for the disappearance of small pets in the neighborhood.

My problem with the book involves Chaz Perrone; he's just too stupid to be a viable threat. He's also a sex maniac who puts the make on practically every woman he meets. Viagra jokes ensue. There are so many of them that this sit-com effect becomes a subplot in the book.

Hiassen deserves kudos for his treatise on Everglades depletion, but he needs to sharpen his villains. I'm afraid he's planning on bringing Chaz Perrone back for an encore as he's still alive at the end of the book.

I read (listened on CD's actually) to this book as I was driving home from the Outer Banks in North Carolina. Don't do that. Part of it was so funny I had to pull over to the side of the road (Interstate 95) because I was laughing so hard. I literally could not continue to drive, and my stomach hurt the rest of the way home. This is a seriously funny book.

It is also a very well written book. I think Hiaasen gets better and better as a writer and as a plotter of mayhem, chaos and confusion with each book. He is a confabulator of a rare order, but probably not any more demented than most of his appreciative and growing audience.

There must be something in the water in South Florida, besides the pollution regularly reported on by Hiaasen. I loved the place even before I learned that it was also good for creativity. Between James Hall and Carl Hiaasen, not to mention the late John D. MacDonald there is talent to spare in this beautiful place. These people can all write with a verve and humor that is sadly missing from much of what I read. It is not that the plot is not describable, it is, but once engrossed in the book you don't care about the plot because you are meeting all of these wonderful, truly outrageous, but utterly believable (at least some of them are believable) people.

Read, or listen to Carl Hiaasen as I did, and laugh out loud. It is good for the soul.

I strongly encourage you NOT to read either the jacket blurb or most reviews of this book. For some reason, people seem to want to give away most of this story to nonreaders. If you do read the spoilers, you will probably only think this a three or four star book . . . yet it is really a tour de force if you let Mr. Hiaasen work his magic without any preconceptions about the story.

As the book opens, Chaz and Joey Perrone are enjoying their second wedding anniversary by taking a cruise that is about to return them to Port Lauderdale. But there's a problem! Despite experiencing great sexual energy, Joey finds herself unexpectedly not enjoying the bliss that such a trip might suggest. Clearly, something's very wrong with her marriage . . . and she doesn't have a clue!

The rest of the book develops for her the reasons why Chaz married her and why the marriage suddenly soured for him. Once she realizes what's been going on, she also wants revenge. What ensues is one of the funniest and most original turning-of-the-tables you can imagine. In the process, Joey learns a lot about herself and what she really wants from life.

As usual, Mr. Hiaasen draws imaginatively on the themes of how greed and self-interest cause people to lead artificial lives that threaten both the environment . . . and ultimately all of us. There's a brilliant symbol involving a deformed snake that makes this book haunting as well as humorous. Snakes also play symbolic roles in other parts of the story. Remember the garden of Eden whenever you read about a snake in this book.

The book does a superb job of helping many of its characters develop and grow based on their experiences. I thought that the evolution of the character named "Tool" was especially well done. Tool goes from being someone who blindly follows orders to someone who takes responsibility for his choices, and makes better ones than those who have been ordering him around. Joey, Ricca, Corbett, Karl, and Chaz also experience meaningful changes as they come to appreciate what they have done.

For long-time fans of Mr. Hiaasen's writing, you will be pleased to meet two old friends in this book.