Word: hiaasen
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...rather abstract object of desire. He wants us to know that his mind, at least, is not in the gutter--can't afford to waste time there, given the amount of busy work he has to attend. This largely derives from the complexities of novelist Carl Hiaasen's quite faithfully followed plot. It places Moore's character, a stripper named Erin Grant, in a nasty fight to regain custody of her daughter from a creepy former spouse, which in turn involves her in the murderous machinations of corrupt rich people...
...great pile of narrative nuts and bolts and, dutifully sorting through it, Bergman forgets to explain persuasively what a nice girl like Erin--smart, spunky and a former FBI employee--is doing in a dump called the Eager Beaver, taking off her clothes for a living. Worse, he misses Hiaasen's strength: setting mean-funny characters spinning through lowlife milieus. Yes, Burt Reynolds has some dirty, lively moments as a crooked, sex-starved Congressman. But the crazy, nothing-to-lose anarchy of people living below the margin and beyond the fringe is not within Bergman's fastidious reach...
...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...