Veteran of three taut but traditional thrillers (with William B. Montalbo: Powder Burn, 1981; Trap Line, 1982; A Death in China, 1984), Hiaasen unveiled an original madcap voice steeped in black humor when he finally soloed in last year's satirical crimemeller, Tourist Trap. Here, he sings on in that same fine, mordant key as a Florida P.I. tackles corruption in the quirky milieu of big-time bass fishing. In Hiaasen's whacked-out world, only photographer-turned P.I., R.J. Decker and his ex-wife Catherine have their heads screwed on straight. So despite Catherine's remarriage, the two stay in close touch when Decker plunges into deep water after rich bass-fishing buff Dennis Gault hires him to prove that archrival Dickie Lockhart cheats at the fishing tourneys Lockhart invariably wins. Decker is hot-tempered and quick-fisted, but even with Catherine's help he's no match for the slew of oddball villains standing between him and a successful case: not only Lockhart and his nympho sister, Lanie; and Rev. Weeb, a TV-preacher who funds Lockhart's bass-fishing TV series and promotes condos built on PCB-riddled sludge; but also Gault's (he's a villain too, framing Decker for murder) hired thug Thomas Curl, who kidnaps Catherine while lurching around with the decaying head of a pit bull clamped onto his arm. Lucky for Decker, help comes in the Paul Bunyansized Skink, an eccentric fisherman who happens to be an incognito, embittered exgovernor of Florida. With Skink at his side, Decker exposes Lockhart as a cheat, Gault as a killer, and Weeb as a fraud—and by rescuing Catherine, rekindles their own true love. Not a perfect mystery/farce—Decker is too weak a protagonist, with trappings too standard-P.I., to properly anchor the wild goings-on. Still, with its byzantine plot and wonderful, weird denizens, this is one of the most delightfully inventive and entertaining crime novels of the year.
Pub Date: Jan. 12, 1987
ISBN: 0446695661
Page Count: 416
Publisher: Putnam
Review Posted Online: Sept. 26, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 1987
Proficient but eminently predictable. Amid all the time shifts and embedded backstories, the most surprising feature is how...
A convicted killer’s list of five people he wants dead runs the gamut from the wife he’s already had murdered to franchise heroine Ali Reynolds.
Back in the day, women came from all over to consult Santa Clarita fertility specialist Dr. Edward Gilchrist. Many of them left his care happily pregnant, never dreaming that the father of the babies they carried was none other than the physician himself, who donated his own sperm rather than that of the handsome, athletic, disease-free men pictured in his scrapbook. When Alexandra Munsey’s son, Evan, is laid low by the kidney disease he’s inherited from his biological father and she returns to Gilchrist in search of the donor’s medical records, the roof begins to fall in on him. By the time it’s done falling, he’s serving a life sentence in Folsom Prison for commissioning the death of his wife, Dawn, the former nurse and sometime egg donor who’d turned on him. With nothing left to lose, Gilchrist tattoos himself with the initials of five people he blames for his fall: Dawn; Leo Manuel Aurelio, the hit man he’d hired to dispose of her; Kaitlyn Todd, the nurse/receptionist who took Dawn’s place; Alex Munsey, whose search for records upset his apple cart; and Ali Reynolds, the TV reporter who’d helped put Alex in touch with the dozen other women who formed the Progeny Project because their children looked just like hers. No matter that Ali’s been out of both California and the news business for years; Gilchrist and his enablers know that revenge can’t possibly be served too cold. Wonder how far down that list they’ll get before Ali, aided once more by Frigg, the methodical but loose-cannon AI first introduced in Duel to the Death (2018), turns on them?
Proficient but eminently predictable. Amid all the time shifts and embedded backstories, the most surprising feature is how little the boundary-challenged AI, who gets into the case more or less inadvertently, differs from your standard human sidekick with issues.Pub Date: April 2, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-5011-5101-9
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Gallery Books/Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: Feb. 18, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2019
More of a western than a mystery, like most of Joe’s adventures, and all the better for the open physical clashes that...
Wyoming Game and Fish Warden Joe Pickett (Free Fire, 2007, etc.), once again at the governor’s behest, stalks the wraithlike figure who’s targeting elk hunters for death.
Frank Urman was taken down by a single rifle shot, field-dressed, beheaded and hung upside-down to bleed out. (You won’t believe where his head eventually turns up.) The poker chip found near his body confirms that he’s the third victim of the Wolverine, a killer whose animus against hunters is evidently being whipped up by anti-hunting activist Klamath Moore. The potential effects on the state’s hunting revenues are so calamitous that Governor Spencer Rulon pulls out all the stops, and Pickett is forced to work directly with Wyoming Game and Fish Director Randy Pope, the boss who fired him from his regular job in Saddlestring District. Three more victims will die in rapid succession before Joe is given a more congenial colleague: Nate Romanowski, the outlaw falconer who pledged to protect Joe’s family before he was taken into federal custody. As usual in this acclaimed series, the mystery is slight and its solution eminently guessable long before it’s confirmed by testimony from an unlikely source. But the people and scenes and enduring conflicts that lead up to that solution will stick with you for a long time.
More of a western than a mystery, like most of Joe’s adventures, and all the better for the open physical clashes that periodically release the tension between the scheming adversaries.Pub Date: May 20, 2008
ISBN: 978-0-399-15488-1
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Putnam
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2008
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