The good news is that a whole lot of new books out there are finally exposing the misdeeds and challenging the agenda of our neocon leaders. The bad news? If you weren't depressed before reading even a fraction of the books on Ian Grey's summer reading list, you will be by the time you finish.
So where's a pissed-off progressive to turn for a little comic relief? The Daily Show helps, but it's only a half hour, and if you don't get Comedy Central, you can't watch it anyhow.
Fortunately, Carl Hiaasen's new novel Skinny Dip was released last week. No, you won't come away armed with facts about corporate malfeasance, right-wing propaganda or atrocities committed around the world and right here at home by our own government.
What you will get is a fun read and the satisfaction of seeing the bad guys get theirs — if only in fiction. That's not giving away any surprises, because in a Carl Hiaasen novel, the bad guys — who are usually corrupt politicians or greedy businessmen — always get what they deserve in the end. The fun is in seeing what fiendishly clever poetic justice Hiaasen will mete out.
After three decades as a journalist, he certainly knows plenty of facts about what real-life bad guys are doing and how. And he sprinkles those facts in fictionalized form throughout his books, so you don't have to feel guilty about totally wasting your time when you could be doing something more politically productive.
In Skinny Dip, the bad guys are Chaz Perrone, a marine biologist who hates nature and doesn't even know which direction the Gulf Stream flows, and his benefactor, Red Hammernut, an agricultural tycoon who pays him to fake water samples to hide illegal fertilizer dumping into the Everglades.
When Perrone thinks his wife has learned what he's doing, he takes her on a cruise for their anniversary and chucks her overboard. We meet the wife, Joey, on page 1 as she plunges from the ship into the water. The impact tears off her clothes — including her panties — and she survives by clinging to a bale of pot.
The rest of the book focuses on Joey's quest to find out why her husband tried to murder her, and her plot to pay him back. How she does it is the only real mystery in the book, so I won't spoil it for you.
Everyone's favorite character, Skink, the one-eyed, roadkill-eating Everglades-dwelling former governor, makes a couple of brief appearances. Also returning is Mick Stranahan, the former cop-turned-island-hermit, who fishes the beautiful, young, naked woman out of the water.
You can usually count on a Hiaasen book having some sort of misfit maniac, often acting as the bad guy's muscle. The one in Skinny Dip is Tool, Red Hammernut's huge, hairy henchman with a heart who collects highway fatality crosses and plants them in the garden outside his trailer in LaBelle. He's addicted to pain medication patches as a result of having a bullet lodged in his butt crack, and he'll do just about anything to score more. But when he sneaks into a nursing home and tries to steal one off the back of a spunky old woman dying of cancer, they end up becoming friends, and theirs is the most tender and touching subplot in the book.
There's also usually some sort of straight man — a fairly normal person who makes all the outlandish characters seem even more deranged by contrast. Skinny Dip's straight man is Karl Rolvaag, a detective from the Midwest who keeps a pet python and wants to go back home, where the crimes are "more forthright and obvious, ignited by common greed, lust or alcohol." He's a total stereotype and a transparent combination of Columbo and Fargo, both of which Hiaasen actually references in describing him.
Skinny Dip will probably appeal most to middle-aged men with an environmental conscience, a yen for a simpler life, and fantasies about hooking up with a much younger woman. Which means Hiaasen's probably got another bestseller on his hands.
It's pretty much the same book he has written over and over again with varying degrees of success. The characters in this book are less cartoonish and over-the-top than in his earlier books, though, and that's something of a disappointment for fans who can't wait to see what wonderfully weird and wild stuff he'll come up with this time.
His premise has always been that Florida is more demented than other places, and a big part of his appeal has always been that he captures that aspect of this place so well. In the end, despite Karl Rolvaag's thoughts to the contrary, this really is just a story about greed, with a little lust thrown in for good measure.
But it's still a fun read and a welcome respite from all those books where the bad guys seem to get richer and more powerful while the rest of us just read about it and get more pissed.
Carl Hiaasen will discuss and sign Skinny Dip on Sat., July 31, at Inkwood Books, 216 S. Armenia Ave., Tampa.
This article appears in Jul 22-28, 2004.