"Nature Girl" by Carl Hiaasen

It's quite rare for me to read book after book by the same author (unless that author is Georgette Heyer - you may have noticed...) but in the last couple of months, I have become very fond of the writing of Carl Hiaasen. He has a real talent for the comedic and sarcastic style that so many authors wish they could pull off and he creates characters that are easy to relate to and care about.

In "Nature Girl" he introduces us to several of these, most notable of which are Honey Santana, a single mom living in a Florida trailer park with her son Fry, a clever and overly mature for his age teenager. In most homes, computers are protected so that children don't have access to specific websites but in this trailer, it's the other way round - Fry has put control on the computer to limit his mother's use of it because Honey is more than a little wacko and when she gets obsesses about something, she is apt to do something pretty stupid.
Which is just what happens when an unfeeling douche of a telesales guy calls Honey and Fry in the middle of dinner to sell them something they don't want, at a price they can't afford. The call spirals into a fight and Honey snaps and starts putting together a plan to get back at the sales guy.
So starts an adventures on Dismal Key in the Everglades which involves (in no particular order):

• A Seminole Indian bearing the name of Sammy Tigertail and weighed down by a heavy identity crisis. 
• A college girl gone wild. 
• A semi-famous mistress of a murderer with a body that drives men wild. 
• A hapless telesales guy who has lost his job and is about to lose his wife. 
• A divorced man named Perry Skinner whose ex-wife Honey is a real basket case (...). 
• A bunch of born-again christians. 
• A disgusting and deranged sexist fish monger. 

Chasing each other around the small island, they all have personalities that are to some extent outside of the normal and when they are mixed, a true mayhem of misunderstandings and calamities break lose making for a hilarious story about forgiveness and about how sometimes, the most best people are the ones we call crazy.

"Skinny Dip" by Carl Hiaasen

Chaz Perrone is a douchebag, this is clear from the first page of Carl Hiaasen's "Skinny Dip" where aforementioned Mr. Perrone's wife is taking a headfirst, involuntary dive from a cruiseship into the ocean. Having somehow gotten in the way of her husband's plan, Joey Perrone finds herself thrown overboard in a pretty callous attempt at her life and as she hits the waves, she's not sure how she will manage to survive for long enough to swim ashore. With the help of fury, swim training and a bale of pot from Jamaica, she clings to life and finds herself being rescued by illegal drugs and a gruff lonesome ex-cop living a life of solitude on a small island off the Florida coast.

Although furious with Chaz for his deceit, Joey is in no way ready to go to the police, instead she wants to take revenge. No turning the cheek for this scorned woman who enrolls her rescuer, Mick, to help her get back at Chaz. She's not out to kill him, just drive him crazy enough to get him to admit exactly why he wanted her dead. 

"Skinny Dip" is a hilarious story of an avenging angel (Joey) who armed with a gold AmEx, Italian shoes and with a somewhat reluctant but very competent companion in tow (Mick) sets out to destroy the life of her hopeless husband. 

This is my second Hiaasen novel and it was even funnier than my first ("Star Island", reviewed earlier this month) and the strength is in the characters: 

Joey is the American dream, the girl next door. She has inherited a vast fortune but has earmarked it for charity and her only extravagance is a bit of clothes and Italian shoes. She's a clever, capable, big hearted and a little naive blonde who is hard not to love. Somehow she reminded me of Charlaine Harris's Sookie Stackhouse - one of those girls that you would love to hang out with. 

Mick is a real man and a real loner. Not in touch with his feelings in any way whatsoever, he has several failed marriages behind him and prefers the company of his dog. 

Chaz is ... indescribably annoying. A biologist with no respect for nature at all, he will happily sell his soul, his wife and his dignity for money. He is an inexcusable playboy who is guided by his genitals in all matters where he is not guided by money. Yes, there is very little to recommend him apart from his good looks and he his the perfect (if somewhat dumb) villain. 

It is these three characters, along with a range of minor characters, that makes "Skinny Dip" work. That and the many plot twists and these characters will have you laughing out loud and maybe read half the night (like I did) because it simply is a hoot. 

How Can You Not Love a Book...

...that begins like this:

At the stroke of eleven on a cool April night, a woman named Joey Perrone went overboard from a luxury deck of the cruise liner M.V. Sun Duchess. Plunging toward the dark Atlantic, Joey was too dumbfounded to panic. 
I married an asshole, she thought, knifing headfirst into the waves. 

"Skinny Dip" by Carl Hiaasen, page 15

"Star Island" by Carl Hiaasen

There are books that are written in a way that makes them obvious contenders for a film contract. Like Twilight or Hunger Games. The authors might not have been thinking this when they wrote them (though honestly with the money up for grabs in the movie business, they might have had it in the back of their minds) but the result still is a book that is ready to transition to the big screen. “Star Island” by Carl Hiaasen is one of those books. It is so ready to be made into a film and I’m pretty sure that it would be tagged with words such “Funny movie of the year” or “Action-packed comedy hit”. It has all the elements – it is even set in sunny Florida, mainly on South Beach, and conjures up a sun-shimmering blue ocean, palm tree and babes in bikinis. It is a place for charmed lives and in this place, young actress Ann DeLusia lives a … eh… confusing life. 

Her job might be one of the simultaneously worst and best jobs in the world. On the pro side, it requires little effort and there’s no requirement to be in the office 9 to 5, it also comes with a clothing allowance and business travel. On the con side, she is always on call and it’s not exactly an identity and integrity boosting job… Ann has landed herself the dubious honour of being stand-in for the volatile airhead superstar Cherry Pye. Having managed that difficult transition from the pageant world to international stardom, Cherry is determined to make the most of her fame by doing as many drugs and as many men as possible. She is a skank and most of the time, she is a strung-out, high as a kite skank. Not exactly the perfect employer and Ann's role mostly consists of pretending to be Cherry at parties, where the star herself is too out of it to appear. 

There is a whole industry around Cherrry and another person who makes a living out of her fame is the paparazzo Bang Abbott. In his vision, Cherry is one snort away from a fatal OD and he is planning to be the photographer that captures her final days. Bang Aboott is a pretty pathetic figure and in his quest to get close to Cherry, he ends up kidnapping the innocent Ann instead.

Ann is nothing if not feisty and she takes her kidnapping with a cool head and barbed wit. Throw into the mix a crazy hermit living in the Florida swaps on a quest to save Ann, a greedy property developer, a father of the star with little interest in her life and little conviction of her intelligence, a mother of the star with big ambitions and a manager with no conscience. It is a scenario ready to explode and it is a hilarious read.

Fancy something that'll make you laugh? And make you think of all of the Britneys and Lindsays of this world and wonder if this is what it is really like (disclaimer! You might end up pitying them!)? Then go for a holiday on "Star Island", it's bound to make you laugh.