Word: hiaasen
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...north of the U.S. are sometimes heard to say that what the nation needs for its spiritual and environmental health is another Ice Age, a mile-thick, continent-wide ice sheet, heading south. In Florida they do not say this. Florida has hurricanes, and when satirist Carl Hiaasen dedicates his new thriller, Stormy Weather (Knopf; 336 pages; $24), to "Donna, Camille, Hugo and Andrew," he is not referring to cute little nieces and nephews...
...Hiaasen, a columnist for the Miami Herald, is a funny fellow who regards human Floridians as a notch below palmetto bugs in matters of ethics and compassion. His new crime novel about South Florida, the sixth in a very good run, is caustic and comic. The author's method hasn't varied since the first, Tourist Season: turn over a rock and watch in glee and honest admiration as those little rascals squirm in the light...
...storm blows substandard roofs off half of Dade County's ranchettes, Edie and her business partner branch out into insurance fraud. Soon the lizards are frisking: sleazy developers, mendacious salesmen, crooked building inspectors, clueless and boorish tourists. These sorry folk are what is called the fabric of society. Hiaasen's good guys are far out on the fabric's fringe: a decent chap who collects human skulls, and a huge, one-eyed wild man who lives in the swamps and eats roadkill. That this gent is a former Governor of Florida, an honest politician driven to distraction by greedsters, says...
...caper novel. But still you want to laugh and cheer when the plucky stripper finally gets the upper hand against Dilbeck: "Davey, I'm trying to cut you a break. Now if you'd prefer Plan B, that's fine. Have you ever been on Hard Copy?" If Hiaasen dialogue like that isn't worth the price of admission, then spend your late nights curled up with Proust...
...lowlife so inept that he boosts wheelchairs, not cars, for a living. Congressman Dilbeck (the poor man's Wilbur Mills) becomes as obsessed with Erin as the sugar lobby is with keeping this drunken buffoon of a subcommittee chairman in office. Throw in a few dead bodies, and Hiaasen's morality play is off and running like a frisky Congressman on a bender...