With all apologies to the good and upstanding residents of the Sunshine State, Florida is synonymous with crime in my mind. While the wild west was being tamed and civilized, the outlaw, pioneer spirit that it epitomized and romanticized was still in its infancy in Florida. And brother, it grew up to be a monster. The characters I encounter in Floridian books and stories are big, bright, and flamboyant in ways that have come to help me define Florida as its very own literary genre. Seriously, if I had a bookstore of my own, I’d divide all things Florida into their own section.
Maybe I’d even arrange it chronologically by publication date, starting with some Hemingway and on to John D. MacDonald’s Travis McGee books. From there we’d go to Elmore Leonard, Charles Willeford’s Hoke Mosely series, along the way picking up Tim Dorsey, Randy Wayne White, Edna Buchanan, Vicki Hendricks, Jeff Lindsay etc. Even Dave Barry, when he jumped into fiction, chose to write in ‘-the Bunch of South Florida Wackos genre-‘ and named Carl Hiaasen the master of said genre. Who am I to argue?
Hiaasen’s first books sunk their hooks into me pretty good. The mix of outrageous humor, biting satire and wicked comeuppance go down so easy and his latest Star Island features two of his best characters. I think his strategy of not featuring the same protagonists book to book, but rather bringing in a rotating supporting cast of familiars is brilliant. Nothing worse than spoiling a good character with overexposure, but I can never get too much of Skink, (who first appeared in Double Whammy), the former governor turned into a hybrid of Grizzly Adams and the Swamp Thing, an eco-avenger and roadkill aficionado who’s lost a minor body part here and there throughout the span of books he’s appeared in.
Hiaasen’s other high mark in grotesquerie is Chemo, the six-foot-nine, one-handed, fugitive who first appeared in Skin Tight where he lost a hand and replaced it with a weed-whacker, (I always wondered if this was where Sam Raimi came up with Ash’s chainsaw accessory in Evil Dead 2), and whose “skin looked like breakfast cereal, like somebody had glued Rice Krispies to every square inch of his face.” Chemo, the victim of a freak electrolysis accident, (the doctor suffered a stroke whilst Chemo was under heavy sedation and “managed to incinerate every normal pore within range of the electrified needle.”), killed his dermatologist and fled to Florida where he’s taken on gigs a bouncer, hit man and most recently bodyguard for Cherry Pye the spoiled and wasted young Pop star at the center, (and perimeter), of the story.
Story? Is there one? Yeah, and as always it’s too over-the-top ridiculous not to be inspired by facts. Comparisons between the antics of Cherry Pye and current pop-culture train wrecks are unavoidable as are the parallels between the fictional and actual parents, but the real lunacy lies in the landscape. As always, whatever’s in the water down there is possessing the characters with delusions of every stripe and encouraging their every greedy impulse.
Hiaasen’s books go down quick and easy and you’ll be forgiven for forgetting or confusing the plots, but never the characters—Was that the one where the guy talks to the rotting dog head on his elbow or gets stomped by the rhino? Wait, was he the muscle head who got loved up by the porpoise or the self-inflicting stigmata dude? Whatever. I’m on board.
Who’s your favorite Florida writer?
Jedidiah Ayres writes fiction and keeps the blog Hardboiled Wonderland.
