Skinny Dip is another brilliant work from Carl Hiaasen. This story follows a cast of fascinating characters as they grapple with what is wrong and what is right. The story starts with Charles "Chaz" Perrone pushing his wife, Joey Perrone, over the rail of a cruise ship. His attempt at murder is foiled when Joey performs a dive and ends up clinging to a bale of marijuana until Mick Stranahan finds her and brings her back to his remote island. From there Joey is reasonably enraged and confused and proceeds to mess with Chaz's mind with the help of Stranahan. She plants reminders of herself in his house and with the help of Stranahan concocts a blackmail plot even going so far as to recreate the incident on tape. Chaz continues to blunder and get himself in further trouble in spite of having a bodyguard named Tool and a girlfriend named Ricca. Detective Rolvaag is also a pain in Chaz's behind as he investigates Joey's disappearance. All while this is going on Chaz's boss Red Hammernut is breathing down his neck about all the trouble he is getting into because he is illegally fabricating water test results for Red (in order to hide the pollution from Red's farms into the water of the Florida Everglades). Chaz can not catch a break as the story goes on and the reader relishes every fool thing he does.

Those with a dark sense of humor. It is some light reading that will have you laughing and in awe at the crazy antics Hiaasen comes up with.

As always with Hiaasen's novels, I enjoyed the quirky cast of characters. Every character has a purpose whether that becomes clear right away or until the end of the novel. Each character is unique in their own way and has motives for their actions that are clear in their own mind (even if it seems outrageous to the reader). He creates well rounded, dynamic characters that get sucked into wild Floridian life.

Read another Hiaasen novel! He always leaves me wanting more. Luckily he's published a plethora of unique stories.

Carl Hiaasen always explores Florida life and generally in the everglades. In the books I've read by him, there is always a theme of the preservation of nature. The "evil" characters are always at odds with nature whether that is through bringing about its destruction or just having a dislike for it.

It is quirky and has that unique Carl Hiaasen feel. I was laughing out loud at certain sections and baffled by what certain characters were doing (all the while the actions being shockingly realistic). I found the narrative unique and interesting. It was definitely a page turner simply because you wanted to see all the terrible things to befall Chaz Perrone.

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Created Oct 05, 2017 at 3:36pm • Submit your own review...