Jamaican pot, attempted murder, lies, sex and blackmail. Carl Hiaasen’s “Skinny Dip” covers all of this and more, offering a perfect combination of high comedy and subtle social commentary.
From the get-go, Hiaasen grabs the reader’s attention with the eventful second wedding anniversary of lowlife Chaz Perrone and his simply lovely wife, Joey. When she presents him with a thoughtful gift of leather golf club covers while aboard their cruise, he returns the favor with what (he imagines to be) a stealthy maneuver to throw her overboard.
The reason for this attempted homicide is unclear until midway through the novel, but each new detail that emerges is more off-the-wall and delightfully intriguing than the one before, especially when Joey starts scheming her revenge.
Joey, it turns out, survives the attempt thanks to her history as a champion swimmer and a bizarre bit of good luck. She happens upon a bale of fine Jamaican weed, which she clings to, until she conveniently washes up (naked) on ex-cop Mick Stranahan’s shore.
Mick is more than willing to help Joey in her plots after she turns down his offer to turn Chaz in to the authorities. It swiftly becomes clear that Joey will exact her revenge, and the reader is alleviated of any fear for the “good guys,” by watching how the bad guys are brought down. It is ridiculous and engrossing in its expert absurdity.
Chaz, a marine biologist with an advanced degree from a diploma factory, works for the corrupt Red Hammernut, a ‘businessman’ who doesn’t want his successful farming business interfered with by pollution regulations on the Everglades. Chaz’s loose morals lend themselves perfectly to his purposes, but also eventually bring about his comeuppance.
Chaz’s morals, such as they are, extend to his love of similarly loose women, which in turn leads to a reliance on Viagra following Joey’s decision to “haunt” him, which, like Hiaasen’s other running jokes, is woven throughout the text so deftly that each time it pops up the joke elicits a chuckle.
Though Chaz is undoubtedly a good-for-nothing of the highest (or lowest) class, Hiaasen crafts a number of other wacky, thoroughly absorbing characters to add to the cast. The enormous, overly hairy and under-educated bodyguard Red, assigned to Chaz, appears at first a cold-hearted hick, (who could love a man with a habit of stealing pain-killers from elderly cancer patients?) but actually comes to be the novel’s moral compass.
Meanwhile, Detective Karl Rolvaag, a transplant to Southern Florida who can’t wait to get back to Idaho, provides endless dry humor and habits ill-suited to his conservative condominium complex, such as his beloved pythons — which leads to another running gag involving his neighbors’ firm belief that the giant snakes are devouring their pint-sized pups.
When Rolvaag encounters Tool, the hilarity only increases, as Tool’s odd habit of stealing highway crosses commemorating crashes is revealed. Rolvaag embarks on a farcical interrogation, wherein Tool claims, in all sincerity, that the cross is for his 45-year-old dog, recently deceased in a plane crash. Rolvaag’s wry humor is apparent here as Hiaasen writes, “(he) was enjoying himself. Interludes with such entertaining freaks would be rare once he got back to Minnesota.”
Mick and Joey’s scheming (and budding romance) make up the major meat of the plot, and this is no less enjoyable than the other minor examples mentioned thus far, but you simply have to read the book to understand Hiaasen’s comic genius in this rare screwball-genre novel.
Hiaasen writes with a smart, unsparing wit about contrasting extremes of unintelligent and bright characters, and each one will draw you further into the often insane but unfailingly diverting world he has created. “Skinny Dip” is a zany, slapstick, simply outstanding romp through Southern Florida and the “entertaining freaks” who inhabit it.