Skinny Dip

Rating:
Summary: Hiaasen on top again!
Review: Chaz throws wife Joey overboard on a cruise. She manages to survive and now the game begins!!! Hiaasen once again shows us how the Everglades is an important part of our environment.

Rating:
Summary: Wacky characters and a fun plot make for a great summer read
Review: 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.

Rating:
Summary: Great plot, characters, and it is funny to boot!
Review: I got my copy of 'Skinny Dip' yesterday and finished it early this morning! It was that good. Mr. Hiaasen is back with a hilariously mix of outragouse villains, colorful characters and his anger at humankind for what they have done to the Florida wilderness. The story starts when Biologist Charles 'Chaz' Perrone suspects his sexy wife Joey, has discovered his a pollution scam he has been running for a Florida Ag Biz Mogel, Red Hammernut (what a name!)- of course this is all illegal but they are making a bunch of money. He solves this problem by taking Joey on a cruise where he plans on dumping off the boat, thus solving his problem. The only problem Is Joey Is a champion swimmer, and this skill, along with some luck and a bale of Marijuana, allows her to survive! After which she sets out to blackmail her Lazy tail chasing husband, and of course all hilarity ensues! This is another Great Hiassen read in the vien of his other books.

I also Recommend: Just about all of Carl Hiassen's other books. Also check out "A Tourist in the Yucatan" fun thriller!

Rating:
Summary: Skinny plot
Review: Skinny Dip could make a decent even if politically correct 250-page read for the beach this summer -- if only the book weren't almost 400 pages long.

This is the first book I've read by Carl Hiaasen, who has made a name for himself with what I have read are bitingly hilarious narratives mostly set in my native Florida. I picked up Skinny Dip on a whim, looking for a well-told but light story to read in the summer heat, and I was only partially rewarded.

The story does have its moments. The story's feckless antagonist, a biologist called Chaz, is initially cast as a villain by explaining that he doesn't separate his papers and plastics for recycling. On the payroll of a rule-bending tycoon, Chaz fakes test results to mask fertilizer runoffs in the Florida Everglades and then he throws his wife over the side of the ship on an anniversary cruise to prevent her from discovering the deed. She survives only by grabbing onto a bale of marijuana that happened to be floating by, and vows to take revenge. It's not Ulysses, of course, but it was never met to be.

Where Skinny Dip falls short is in its pacing and its politics.

The poor rhythm of the tale comes from its length, which includes too many dead spots to make it the kind of page-turner it could have been with a more aggressive editor (see the lengthy and ultimately unsatisfying revenge plot of the cannabis-hugging wife).

And the politically correct characterizations -- however admirable they might seem at first -- are in the end tiring. Mr. Hiaasen seems more than a little earnest in the moral undertones he creates. The book's obvious environmental subplot, the use of a character who vows to never misuse the services of illegal aliens again, a host of smiling good guys who never drink and who will their assets to charity -- it's enough to make it seems like the obvious lessons and not the narrative are the point of the book. That may work with children's stories, but one presumes that adults' literary tastes are more involved -- even when they are lounging at the seaside.