Customer Reviews

Stormy Weather

5 star:		(56)
4 star:		(29)
3 star:		(11)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

If you believe that there's a little good in everyone, then Stormy Weather and Carl Hiaasen are not for you.

Stormy Weather is classic Hiaasen. His writing is so sarcastic and unrestrained by reality that it reminds me a little of Douglas Adams (Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy) or Neil Stevenson (Snow Crash). Interestingly, these are science fiction authors and Hiaasen doesn't write science fiction, but, like these science fiction writers, Hiaasen's writing is modern and clever and his imagination knows no limits. His books are parodies of human nature, especially greed and stupidity, sort of like Voltaire's Candide. After painting such surreal pictures of a cast of very selfish characters, often criminals, Hiaasen then draws upon some Dante as he assigns the characters to their inevitable and well-earned unique circles of hell (that's usually in Florida involving water, alligators, or at least a storm). It says something about a writer when his best known hero is a one-eyed crazy man who lives in the everglades but used to be the governor of the great state of Florida.

If you like the sarcastic social comedy of George Carlin, the ironic wit of Steven Wright, and the slapstick of Peter Sellers, then you will love Carl Hiaasen's Stormy Weather. If you find Carlin offensive, Wright unfunny, and Sellers overrated, then you're going to hate Carl Hiaasen.

If you're new to Hiaasen's books, Stormy Weather is a good place to start. My favorite Hiaasen books are: Strip Tease, 1993; Stormy Weather, 1995; Lucky You, 1997; Sick Puppy, 2000; and Skinny Dip, 2004.

After weeks of overtime I escaped to the Sierra Foothills, hosted to a relaxing Thanksgiving weekend with Stormy Weather (thanks Bill & Karen!). The greatest disappointment of this book was that it ended before the weekend & I had no sequel!

"On August 23, the day before the hurricane struck, Max and Bonnie Lamb awoke early, made love twiece and rode the shuttle bus to Disney World." So begins this marvelously improbably tale which weaves together the paths of newlyweds, cons, thugs, and a living-off-the-land, scraggly haired ex-governor. Easy to pick up and slide into, difficult to put down, this romp into Hurricane Andrew's wake tosses quirky characters into chaos. Not as extreme as Hitchiker's Guide to the Galaxy (Adams), more of a down-home Good Omens (Pratchett & Gaiman) without devils or angels.

Character development is not intense, but the contrived situations that bring those characters to light actually seem plausible. Fewer laughs in this book and more subconscious chuckles. If you want something traditional & predictable, leave this one on the shelf and go buy Grisham or Clancy. But if a road-kill scavenging, toad-licking ex-governor piques your curiousity (and he's a much better guardian of the land than our current "president"), grant serious consideration to this book!

Five stars for creating an extremely improbable story and making it seem as natural as a tale about the Springfield 'burbs! Five stars for fun. A truly amusing diversion.

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Given the recent hurricanes Katrina and Rita that hit the United States in the past year, 'Stormy Weather,' by Carl Hiaasen, seemed like a timely read. This novel tells a story of tourists, native Floridians, scam artists, and insurance adjusters as they interact in Miami after a Hurricane strikes.

Max and Bonnie Lamb are honeymooning in Disney World when the hurricane hits Florida. Bonnie just wants to resume the honey moon festivities, but her husband, Max, an advertising rep, sees an opportunity to impress his bosses and drags Bonnie down to Miami to get footage of the destruction carved out by the storm.

Edie Marsh has been roving Florida in search of a Kennedy. Her plan has been to seduce one, and then blackmail them on her way to easy street. The plan never bears fruit. After the hurricane, she sees an opportunity to work another scam and sets off for Miami with a partner named Snapper, who acquired his nickname after an unfortunate childhoot incident left him with a deformed jaw. Edie's plans go awry when Snapper turns out to be more difficult to handle than she thought.

Augustine took a plane trip one day to discover he had spent months in a coma after the plane he was riding crashed. He also found wealth in the form of an insurance settlement. He no longer works, and spends his time dating the wrong women and juggling human skulls. Just before the hurricane strikes, he learns he had inherited his uncles exotic animal farm. After the hurricane, he has a problem: although the weather passed, the animals are loose.

Finally, there is Skink. This crazy wild man has great teeth and a protective streak for Florida's wilderness. He trusts one man, Jim Tile (one of Florida's few black highway patrolmen). He has been waiting for just the right hurricane to hit Florida, and is disappointed when this one doesn't do all he hoped for. However, when he spies a tourist taking advantage of the destruction to shoot home movies, he hatches a new plan.

These are just some of the characters that fill the pages of 'Stormy Weather.' Throughout the novel, they end up running into each other and confounding one another's plans. It's an incredibly twisted plot, but Hiaasen pulls it off perfectly.

This is more than just a spirited novel. This book allows Hiaasen to take swipes at many Florida institutions from Disney World and high rise developments to crooked politicians that sell out the environment and scam artists preying on the desperate after the hurricane. Still, the novel is a great read and to borrow a cliche, a real page turner.

I recommend this novel to anyone that wants a fun and entertaining read that falls on the edge of crime fiction. Elmore Leonard and Dave Barry fans should enjoy it immensely. Existing fans of Hiaasen will delight in getting more adventures of Skink.

Overall Grade: 5 stars.

This is one of the best crime thrillers I've ever read -- like all great crime novels, it transcends the genre by being such a wonderful example of it. It's similar to what Elmore Leonard does, but much as I love Leonard, I have even more of an affection for Hiaasen. STORMY WEATHER is an absolute laugh riot from start to finish, the labyrinthe plot makes it un-putdownable, and it's got an intense streak of moral high ground to keep things interesting. This book rules. --Thomas S. Roche is the editor of the NOIROTICA series.

I tend to read more 'highbrow literature' than beach books, and when I descend a tier or two, I usually find myself reading Elmore Leonard and Douglas Adams novels, which in my opinion, are a more than decent bridge between Haute Reading and Hedonistic Reading. (As an aside, I honestly can't think of any author who writes better dialogue than Leonard since Shakespeare.)

However, I have discovered a third author (Hiaasen) to match Leonard and Adams, and now have a triumvirate of authors to bring with me on future vacations. I guess my discovery is a little late in the making, but two things have prevented me from reading Hiaasen in the past. Number one was the film "Striptease." Number two was the marketing of Hiaasen's stories; someone at Knopf is convinced that Hiaasen's books should be packaged to resemble Caprisun drinks, and I have always, unfortunately, judged his books by their covers.

"Stormy Weather" was my first Hiaasen read, and I'm not sure storytelling gets any better than this. One of the knocks against Hiaasen is that his characters are a little TOO zany; that the plots are too muddled with unbelievability. However, if I wanted to experience stories that are as 'real' as life itself, I would just go down to the grocery store and study the air-conditioned ennui of shoppers picking through the produce section.

Hiaasen is a highly-intelligent humorist; indeed, as some have dubbed him, "the Twain of the crime novel." He owns Florida's culture and underbelly unlike any other author, and he makes you believe that his Florida, in fact, IS Florida: a phallic-shaped, theme-park kingdom filled with Captain Ahab-like former governors roaming the Everglades; hideously-deformed malcontents who ne'er think twice of taking human life; insipid insurance and motor homes salesmen; busty, brainy vixens; and the occasional skull-juggling gentleman of independent means.

His language is simple and easy-going, but the occasional reference to T.S. Eliot and Henry Miller lets the intelligent reader know there's a solid backbone beneath the pliant, palm tree prose.

Stormy Weather itself is entertaining, but at the same time environmentally thought-provoking. And Hiaasen's character Skink (whom he brings back in later books) is his own personal vigilante. It is sad to think that Florida, such a beautiful state at one time, has become a Plastic Flamingo. And nothing can probably be done to stop, or even stunt, its destruction by human greed. But Skink does what he can, and so does his Creator.

A great read; indeed, an imperative read for anyone interested in contemporary storytelling.

I admit I was suspect when I first picked up this set and saw Ed Asner was reading Stormy Weather. Carl Hiaasen books get pretty raunchy at times and I was not sure I could listen to Ed Asner reading about hot and dirty action. I was pleased to find my misgivings to be unfounded. The consummate actor Mr. Asner brings Stormy Weather to life with a dry , sardonic wit that fits the material and allows the listener to get to know the characters and revel in their adventures and misadventures.
The most colorful character in this ensemble piece- the crazy ex-governor turned swamp dweller Skink is particularily well drawn in Asner's reading. This is one of my favorite Hiaasen books and I am very happy I got an audio copy to listen to in the car!
For those of you who are new to Hiaasen- the governor appears again in Sick Puppy.

This is the second Hiaasen novel I've read, and based on the word-of-mouth about him in general and the reviews for this book in particular, I felt especially let down. My giving it 3 stars is actually generous.

Perhaps the book was just built up too much, or maybe I'm just jaded, but this novel never really engaged me. I could have put it down after 100 pages and not felt bad or any lack of "closure" for not knowing what happens. Then again, I enjoy "quirky" and "off-beat" literature, and this struck me as a mainstream book **trying** to be off-beat for mainstream readers. Maybe I just have a higher threshold for such stuff.

There are several reasons why this didn't click with me. First and foremost, almost every character in here annoyed me. Let me be clear and clarify/contrast that: a well-written book designs antagonists that we are obviously not supposed to like and secretly hope they get a "come-uppance". That isn't what happened here: everyone (heroes and villains) were simply irritating--without actually being **interesting**, and I simply wished they'd go away so someone more interessting would come along.

Going hand-in-hand with that, the antagonists consistently suffered from "willful stupidity" -- they would do dumb things that were obviously dumb and served no purpose except plot convenience, because if they had a few more brain cells to rub together they wouldn't be in whatever situation there was and the book would grind to a halt. That may or may not be lazy writing, but to me it's certainly frustrating: I enjoy my villains to have a mind and a master plan that's interesting.

Lastly, the book is about 100 pages longer than it needs to be, and since it had already worn out its welcome by that point it seemed especially tedious to me. Again, I could have walked away from this by then with a clean conscience, but the only thing preventing me from doing so was that there wasn't anything else handy for me to read at the time.

I can see why mainstream readers might think Hiaasen in general and this book in particular are funny and off-beat, but since I read a lot of that type of stuff anyway, this is a sub-par offering. For instance, Tim Dorsey does the same type of thing, but much, much better.

I'm an environmentalist on the basis that I like clean air, water, etc., as opposed to being a watermelon environmentalist: green on the outside, communist red on the inside.

I like Carl Hiaasen's books because the environmental message isn't preachy. Instead, he simply writes hysterically funny stories about the assorted unfortunate (and self-inflicted) fates of people who show up make a quick buck on Florida, at the cost of Florida.

This book is a hilarious romp through post-Andrew South Florida. The bottom line is that hurricanes are nature's way of saying "Don't build here!" and people who move to South Florida to buy shoddily-constructed, never-inspected houses are simply getting what they deserve.

Of course, not everyone is a dupe or a huckster. There are some actual decent people in his books, and their sterling qualities are the perfect foil for the dupes and hucksters that constitute the rest of local humanity.

Hiaasen's genius is in his caricatures and how he plays them off against each other.

Great book.

Hiaasen as his best! What better way to write an adventurous novel about Florida than to incorporate the act of God that plagues us most...a hurricane!!! But what most people do not think of, that Hiaasen has lived through, is the crazy aftermath of said hurricane. Lack of fresh water, food and ice cannot drive away those hell bent on insurance fraud, roofing scams, or the crazed tourist that wants to capitalize on some original footage of the events as they unfold.

Beautifully told, masterfully woven stories of corruption, adultery, murder, kidnapping, sex, circus freaks, mafia, exotic animals on the loose, and an ex governor with an electronic dog collar. This book will have you on the edge of your seat without the ability to put it down. Stormy Weather provides a refreshing break from reality that makes you thankful you are not a character in the story.

I love the way Hiaasen correlates being a politician or wealthy real estate developer with corruption and complete lack of moral conviction. In reality, this is not true but perhaps in Hiaasen's "newsworthy" south Florida world, it is true. He comically weaves his opinions about the state of Florida's insurance laws and medical laws into this action packed story of environmental extremist who take it upon themselves to play God.

This book has my highest recommendation for anyone who loves fiction novels, particularly those who are familiar with the state of Florida.

M.J. Wright of Reed & Wright Book Review, Inc.

As a Florida resident, I can surely attest that the craziness demonstrated in this book is a fact! Hiassen is a master at capturing our insane little world and making it hilarious. I loved this book - and as I neared the end - I wished it would go on forever.