Not as funny as Hiaasen’s best (Star Island, 2010, etc.), with a title character more vicious than amusing, but still the...
A severed arm that a visiting angler hooks off Key West kicks off Hiaasen’s 13th criminal comedy.
Though he’s anything but eager to follow Monroe County Sheriff Sonny Summers’ bidding and drive the arm to Miami to see if it belonged to some local stiff, the encounter Andrew Yancy has with Miami Assistant Medical Examiner Rosa Campesino, which ends with him taking the arm back home and parking it in his freezer, starts to change his attitude toward the case. Unfortunately, it doesn’t change the fact that he’s been suspended from the Sheriff’s Department and banished to the gruesome post of restaurant inspector. But once the arm is identified as that of developer Nicholas Stripling, Yancy, calling himself “Inspector Yancy,” takes it on himself to question Nicky’s wife, Eve, his estranged daughter, Caitlin Cox, Eve’s sworn enemy, and several other concerned parties. When two of these parties are shot to death very shortly after their chats with Yancy, he knows he’s onto something, even though the imperviously obtuse Sonny Summers doesn’t. Leaving behind his “future former girlfriend” Bonnie Witt, who’s just revealed an unexpectedly colorful personal history to him, Yancy takes Rosa along to follow the arm’s trail to Lizard Cay, Bahamas, where more crazies await: a toothless voodoo priestess called the Dragon Queen, her hapless client Neville Stafford, whose troubles bear an uncanny resemblance to Yancy’s own, and his companion Driggs, a monkey reputed to have worked on the Pirates of the Caribbean movies. The mind-boggling plot will require yet another Hiaasen hurricane, a house fire, several perp walks for diverse felonies and a healthy dose of cleansing violence to bring down the curtain.
Not as funny as Hiaasen’s best (Star Island, 2010, etc.), with a title character more vicious than amusing, but still the gold standard for South Florida criminal farce.Pub Date: June 12, 2013
ISBN: 978-0-307-27259-1
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: May 29, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2013
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
A repugnant narrator, even an unreliable one, makes it difficult to focus on the true victim, one who is crushed under the...
The traumatic memories of a teenager’s rape are medically erased, but lingering thoughts of the attack remain, infecting everyone in her close-knit community.
15-year-old Jenny Kramer thought the party she'd been invited to would be the moment when she’d finally blossom, maybe even get a moment alone with the dashing Doug Hastings. Instead she found herself drunk, in the woods, the victim of a vicious hourlong rape, of which Walker spares the reader no detail in this unnecessarily explicit debut. After she's rushed to the hospital, Jenny’s parents—blubbering car salesman Tom and tightly put together homemaker Charlotte —decide to give her an experimental drug cocktail to erase her memories of the attack. If the process were successful, there’d be no book, so enter the skin-crawlingly smug narrator, soon introduced as psychiatrist Dr. Alan Forrester, who begins treating Jenny, along with her whole family, after her nearly successful suicide attempt. It’s difficult to empathize with a character—our narrator no less—who looks at a 15-year-old assault victim and wonders to himself “why [he] could not see the rape in her eyes.” As the well-to-do enclave of Fairview, Connecticut, tries to regroup in the wake of zero viable suspects, Tom Kramer makes it his mission to find Jenny’s rapist, jumping on every slim lead, like the sighting of a blue Honda Civic near the party. The introduction of one of Alan’s other patients, a soldier who endured the same treatment as Jenny, merely clutters an already busy story whose resolution is anything but satisfying.
A repugnant narrator, even an unreliable one, makes it difficult to focus on the true victim, one who is crushed under the weight of this ridiculous plot.Pub Date: July 12, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-250-09791-0
Page Count: 320
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: April 12, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2016
An easy, breezy beach read with a clever twist.
Four women confess to the murder of one man during a wild wedding weekend at a swanky California resort.
The DeBleu-Banks weekend wedding extravaganza is underway at the Serenity Spa & Resort, and three college friends of the bride are about to be reunited after nearly two decades. Gorgeous and successful lawyer Kate Cross has everything she’s ever wanted, except for a baby, and her boyfriend, Max, fed up with the stress of trying to conceive, dumps her at the resort’s front desk. Ginger Adler is a harried and married mom of three who is tired of being the “responsible one” compared to her beloved but free-spirited husband, Frank, and hopes for some peace and quiet, which is not to be. Her 15-year-old daughter, Elsie, is up to something, and Ginger must face her ex–best friend, Emily Brown, whom she caught drunkenly making out with Frank in college. Little does Ginger know, the loss of a child years ago has Emily drowning her sorrows in alcohol and a fling with handsome Henry, whom she met, and had sex with, on the plane. Then there’s elegant 68-year-old Lulu Franc, the groom's aunt, whose fifth husband, Pierce, is acting squirrelly. The wild card is young mother Sydney Banks. Kate becomes fond of the young woman and her baby, Lydia, but something’s off about Sydney. The weekend is filled with bonding, lots of champagne, and no shortage of melodrama, but no one expects murder. When a man is found dead, Lulu, Kate, Ginger, and Emily each confess to the crime—as revealed in police interview transcripts with the suspects, the bride, and gossipy staff members—but their stories don’t add up. Lamanna’s characters aren’t too deeply drawn, but they’re familiar enough to connect with, and more than a few burning questions keep the pages turning: What is Lulu’s husband up to? What is Sydney’s real story? And, of course, who is the dead guy, and what really happened to him?
An easy, breezy beach read with a clever twist.Pub Date: Sept. 3, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-4926-9406-9
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Sourcebooks Landmark
Review Posted Online: June 16, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2019
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