Bad Monkey by Carl Hiaasen
Bad Monkey
“… which was the boilerplate back nine fantasy of so many ultra-successful, ultra-resourceful American males: to live by the sea in perpetual sunshine, in a state with no income tax.” (Page 182)
What is it about Florida that produces the insanity? I’m unsure, but two of the finest authors of the genre live and write there. About there. In a class about the Literature of the West, or Western American Lit., the professor assured us that the characters in a Larry McMurty novel were drawn as caricatures — larger than life. After years on the road, I’ve met everyone of those characters in real life. Not larger than but for real. Which, in reference to the aforementioned whack-job, wack-a-doodle characters in the works of Tim Dorsey and Carl Hiaasen, it worries me.
Those people might exist.
One red-headed Capricorn exclaimed I was identical to a younger protagonist (really an anti-hero) in one of Hiaasen’s works.
“I thought that guy was just like you, Kramer.”
So the latest in this genre includes a dope-smoking detective, and, in keeping with CSI franchise, a smoking-hot forensic doctor who does autopsies in Miami.
Is a good read, not exactly genre-bending, but the author did help invent, elevate, and establish the Florida insanity.
I stayed up late to finish the book; I don’t have any higher praise.