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The Hiaasen Collection
Basket Case
Once a hotshot investigative reporter, Jack Tagger now bangs out
obituaries for a South Florida daily, “plotting to resurrect my newspaper career
by yoking my byline to some famous stiff.” Jimmy Stoma, the infamous front man
of Jimmy and the Slut Puppies, dead in a fishy-smelling scuba “accident,” might
be the stiff of Jack’s dreams—if only he can figure out what happened.
Standing in the way are (among others) his ambitious young editor, who hasn’t
yet fired anyone but plans to “break her cherry” on Jack; the rock star’s
pop-singer widow, who’s using the occasion of her husband’s death to re-launch
her own career; and the soulless, profit-hungry owner of the newspaper, whom
Jack once publicly humiliated at a stockholders’ meeting.
With clues from the dead rock singer’s music, Jack ultimately unravels Jimmy
Stoma’s strange fate—in a hilariously hard-won triumph for muckraking
journalism, and for the death-obsessed obituary writer himself.
“Always be halfway prepared” is Jack Tagger’s motto—and it’s more than enough to
guarantee a wickedly funny, brilliantly entertaining novel from Carl Hiaasen.
Sick Puppy
When Palmer Stoat notices the black pickup truck following him
on the highway, he fears his precious Range Rover is about to be carjacked. But
Twilly Spree, the man tailing Stoat, has vengeance, not sport-utility vehicles,
on his mind. Idealistic, independently wealthy and pathologically
short-tempered, Twilly has dedicated himself to saving Florida's wilderness from
runaway destruction. He favors unambiguous political statements -- such as
torching Jet-Skis or blowing up banks -- that leave his human targets shaken but
re-educated.
After watching Stoat blithely dump a trail of fast-food litter out the window,
Twilly decides to teach him a lesson. Thus, Stoat's prized Range Rover becomes
home to a horde of hungry dung beetles. Which could have been the end to it had
Twilly not discovered that Stoat is one of Florida's cockiest and most powerful
political fixers, whose latest project is the "malling" of a pristine Gulf Coast
island. Now the real Hiaasen-variety fun begins ...
Dognapping eco-terrorists, bogus big-time hunters, a Republicans-only hooker, an
infamous ex-governor who's gone back to nature, thousands of singing toads and a
Labrador retriever greater than the sum of his Labrador parts -- these are only
some of the denizens of Carl Hiaasen's outrageously funny new novel.
Brilliantly twisted entertainment wrapped around a powerful ecological plea,
Sick Puppy gleefully lives up to its title and gives us Hiaasen at his riotous
and muckraking best.
