Just finished reading his latest, "Fever Beach," which goes to show you some good can come out of the January 6th siege of the nation's capitol. Mr. Hiaasen has created a cast of characters that in their own way resemble Jimmy Breslin's "The Gang that Couldn't Straight" about the Mafia in South Brooklyn.
Mr. Hiaasen's gang is the Strokers for Liberty, a rag tag cohort of heavily armed, but nearly benign White Supremacists in South Florida who can't think straight.
The Stokers, who believe in branding, try and portray the final "s" in their name as a swastika, only to have it come out looking like a smudged typo.
The Strokers, eventually The Strokerz, (get it?) are lead by a fruitcake named Dale Figgo, who tries to get a membership with nom de guerres like Bed Pan, Skid Mark, Raw Dog and Bottle Rocket all rowing in the same direction. There is probably someone named Stick Shift as well. Dale partially succeeds when they meet at night on Fever Beach, where the only illumination is coming from Tiki torches and not their brains.
There is also of course a overly horny, corrupt Congressman whose father cleans up his messes, and a charity /foundation which funnels money into creating a workforce of dangerous juveniles who are given access to serious power tools to build a house for the "community." They are called "The Wee Hammers."
There is an escort named Galaxy who has the video and the pictures of her with the Congressman during playful sex games. Galaxy portrays herself as underage to the Congressman because that turns him on even more, but who is actually in her mid-20s. Several fake driver licenses back up whoever she wants to be.
One of the highlights to me in book is when the congressman tells Galaxy that he's heard on Fox News, from Jeanine Pirro no less, that there are woke lobbyists on Capitol Hill who are trying to get legislation passed to ban black 8-balls in pool, and replace them with rainbow colored ones. Congressman Boyette is trying to get a bill passed that preserves black 8-balls, even though no one is trying to change them.
In this sea of wackos there are two do-gooders, Twilly and Viva, who manage to get a pivotal vote changed on a seven member zoning board for yet another unsightly, corruptly funded and approved development, by producing a board member who all thought was dead. For shits and giggles they also manage to blow up an excavator at the job site because Twilly carries dynamite in the back of his car and knows who to use it.
Several of the characters meet death by forms so strange that the medical examiner is challenged on how to code the cause of death using the International Classification of Diseases, which even has a code for death by wayward trolley. The flag pole death might spawn a new code.
Twilly and Viva are pretty much responsible for the breakup of the Strokerz and the waylaying of the condo project, The Bunkers. But Twilly knows it's just pissing in the ocean.
Another developer will succeed in building something and another group of wackos will congeal for awhile. It is after all South Florida.
Life goes on everywhere.
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Note:
After reading Carl's "Fever Beach," I'm left in awe how he stitches together so many ways to describe someone. Reading him is infectious to see if I can come up with my own cast of characters and misfits. Here goes:
Hans-Peter is a butt model for a famous toilet seat company in Wisconsin. He is called on to be a paid consultant to use and report on different toilet seat prototypes developed by the company.
Hans-Peter and the company are particularly interested in comfort and the appearance of residue that lands on surfaces that don't get cleaned by a singular flush. In other words, poop where you don't want it to land, unless you're providing stool samples for an annual physical.
As the company produces new prototypes, Hans-Peter is called in to consult. It is not bad work, but does require adherence a certain diet in order to poop as many times as is needed to get a good "feel" and "reading" of the proposed model.
Hans-Peter enjoys the work since it is indoors and keeps him out of the cold Wisconsin winters. His grandfather was also a butt model, but in those days his testing was done outdoors in what looked like a broom closet with a half moon carved into the door.
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