Relax, enjoy, and marvel anew at the power of unbridled fictional invention.
Rejoice, fans of American madness who’ve sought fulfillment in political reportage. South Florida’s master farceur (Skink—No Surrender, 2014, etc.) is back to reassure you that fiction is indeed stranger than truth.
Even though a prefatory note indicates that both the come-hither title and the stuff about giant Gambian pouched rats are rooted in reality, no one but Hiaasen could have dreamed up the complications arising from the collision of Merry Mansfield with talent agent Lane Coolman—a literal collision, since she rams his rented car while shaving her bikini area in the driver's seat of a Firebird. Make that multiple collisions, since Lane turns out to be only the latest victim of Merry and her partner Zeto’s kidnap-for-hire schemes. In this case, he’s the wrong victim, mistaken for beach-replenishment contractor Martin Trebeaux, whose swindling has put him on the wrong side of Calzone crime family capo Dominick "Big Noogie" Aeola. Since Coolman’s being held captive, he can’t be on hand to walk his client Buck Nance, the reality star of Bayou Brethren, though a personal appearance at the Parched Pirate, and Buck goes off script into a racist rant that sparks a demonstration and sends him fleeing, though he's still capable of inspiring Benny Krill, a murderous apprentice racist who dreams of joining him on his show. After laboring in vain to persuade Jon David Ampergrodt, his boss at Platinum Artists Management, as well as Merry and Zeto that he’s worth ransoming, Coolman escapes, but it doesn’t matter: he’s still confined in the zoo that’s Key West, where liability lawyer Brock Richardson’s fiancee loses the $200,000 ring he didn’t bother to resize after his fatter former fiancee returned it, and when his neighbor, health inspector Andrew Yancy, discovers it, he hides it in the hummus in the hope that an indefinite search for the bauble will stall Richardson’s plan to build a McMansion that will obstruct Yancy’s sea view. Etc. How can Hiaasen possibly tie together all this monkey business in the end? His delirious plotting is so fine-tuned that preposterous complications that would strain lesser novelists fit right into his antic world.
Relax, enjoy, and marvel anew at the power of unbridled fictional invention.Pub Date: Sept. 6, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-385-34974-1
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: June 21, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2016
Sluggish plot hemmed in by too much backstory and going-through-the-motions prose. Not Brown’s best.
Lukewarm thriller from bestselling Brown (Hello, Darkness, 2003, etc.).
Sayre Hoyle doesn’t believe her brother Danny committed suicide, and she’s returned home to prove it—but it seems nothing ever changes in Destiny, Louisiana. The small town looks the same as ever, and the same good old boys are sitting in the same vinyl booths at the same diner, conniving and backstabbing and telling lies. Too bad one of them just happens to be Sayre’s daddy, Huff Hoyle. A self-made rich man in a poor parish, he owns a smoke-belching iron foundry, a hellish place that at least provides employment for the beaten-down men of Destiny. If industrial accidents do happen in one of ’em now and then, well, that’s God’s will. Tough-talking Huff don’t want the government OSHA boys anywhere near his foundry, and that goes double for union organizers and other un-American busybodies. Sayre’s heard it all before—and still doesn’t trust either him or her creepy older brother, Chris, who took so much pleasure in tormenting her when they were young. And there’s Huff’s new right-hand man, lawyer Beck Merchant, to contend with. What exactly does Beck stand to gain by his involvement with Huff and cronies? If only he weren’t so good-looking and sexy. . . . Back to the story: Did Slap Watkins, jug-eared, degenerate scion of inbred bayou-dwellers, kill gentleman Danny in a fit of rage when Danny refused to hire Slap’s fellow parolees? Nah. Slap doesn’t have the brains or coordination to kill a June bug. Back to the subplot: Will the tyrannical Huff resort to violence when his ironworkers defy him and go out on strike? And back to the reason Sayre hates Huff: He forced her to have an abortion, performed by an incompetent doctor who tied her, screaming, to the table in his back room. And now for the reason Beck hates Huff . . . .
Sluggish plot hemmed in by too much backstory and going-through-the-motions prose. Not Brown’s best.Pub Date: Aug. 17, 2004
ISBN: 0-7432-4553-9
Page Count: 432
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2004
Like her cast, James gets in a little more drama for a lively continuation of her series.
An impossible actor’s career ends when he dies midperformance, leaving a cast and crew who would have been all too willing to have done the deed.
Charlie Harris and his feline sidekicks, Maine coon Diesel and kitten Ramses, are all excited that Charlie’s daughter, Laura, and her husband, Frank, will be headlining Athena College’s spring production as lead actress and director in a homegrown new play, Careless Whispers. Laura was excited too until the male lead, who had to bail suddenly, is replaced by someone she knows all too well: Luke Lombardi. Laura’s had run-ins with Luke in the past and knows that he’s a drama queen in all the wrong ways. When Luke shows up in Mississippi, Charlie and his partner, Helen Louise Brady, are suitably unimpressed with his imperious attitude and clueless mini-entourage, but both figure there’s little to worry about until a string of pranks seems to escalate to Luke’s onstage murder. Though Charlie is concerned that Laura’s dislike of Luke might point to her as a suspect, c’mon! Chief Deputy Kanesha Berry, whom Charlie’s earlier investigations (The Pawful Truth, 2019, etc.) have made something of a family friend, doesn’t think Laura is guilty either, though she does have to follow procedure and question anyone with means and motive. While there aren’t many folks in the means category, Luke’s volatile and narcissistic manner has heaped the motive category with suspects—and can anyone blame them? It may all come down to unraveling the mystery behind the identity of the playwright, Finnegan Zwake, a pseudonym no one had thought to question until Charlie decides he can’t help but, once again, get involved.
Like her cast, James gets in a little more drama for a lively continuation of her series.Pub Date: Jan. 21, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-451-49115-2
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Berkley Prime Crime
Review Posted Online: Oct. 27, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2019
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