A new book by Carl Hiaasen is always worth reading. Skinny Dip is his latest, and with a new publisher in the UK, there’s been quite a bit of attention made of it: a major feature in The Guardian Review, and an appearance on Radio 4’s Open Book.
This is Hiaasen at the top of his form with the story of Joey Perrone, wife of Chaz, the rather stupid biologist who doesn’t seem to care enormously for the environment. As the book opens, Chaz is throwing his wife off the deck of Florida-bound cruise-liner.
It’d be a shame to spoil the carefully layered plot details, but it all ties together very neatly and visits some familiar territory, confronting the despoiling of the natural Florida habitat, and the corruption that it engenders. If you haven’t read Hiaasen pick him up, and don’t let the disaster that was the movie adaptation of his novel Striptease put you off.