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Joey Perrone is the multi-millionaire wife of marine biologist Dr. Chaz Perrone. They are on a Caribbean anniversary cruise when he lures her on deck and suddenly, and inexplicably to Joey, grabs her by her trim little ankles and tosses her overboard off the coast of Florida. This all happens in the first paragraph, so there are no spoilers here. She washes ashore on a bale of Jamaican weed and is rescued by self-exiled ex-cop Mick Stranahan. When she tells him her story, he wants to call the authorities, but Joey has other plans. She wants to find out why Chaz tried to kill her and then make him pay for it. The only way to do that is to stay dead.
What follows is a whomping tale of cat and mouse, with Joey and Mick gaslighting the publicly mourning Chaz at every turn. She plants personal items in his house, which Chaz has stripped bare of all reminders of his dearly departed wife. They snoop on Chaz's girlfriends. As they uncover Chaz's reason for murder --- he has been fudging on the Everglades water samples he takes for the Florida Game and Fish department because he's on the take from a corporate vegetable farmer --- they cook up the coup de gras. When the bad guys lose --- and they always do in Hiaasen's stories --- they lose in a delightful, deserved, eye-for-an-eye denouement. If only life worked that way in this wicked world, how sweet it would be.
There are certain authors who throw me into withdrawal when they don't produce a novel every year. Carl Hiaasen is one of them. Oh, he's been putzing around with young adult fiction, but when a Hiaasen fan wants a fix with his South Florida characters and partners in crime, they want the full-on adult version. SKINNY DIP delivers. In fact, pure prejudice aside, this may be one of his best yet. That's saying something for any series writer who has nine books in the same genre under his or her belt. But in this one, Hiaasen brings us fresh, new and appealing characters, a plot to keep you turning the pages, and his usual humorous swipe at the bad guys who continue --- despite his best efforts --- to despoil Florida's ecosystem.
--- Reviewed by Roz Shea
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