Florida

There may not be many people who are more protective of Florida than the journalist and novelist Carl Hiaasen. In highly comical ways his characters wade through a state that is gaining population faster than raging flood waters. Carl shows no mercy toward developers and politicians. They are the enemy.

Carl has famously created a character named Sink, who now only has one eye, lives under a bridge, and is a former governor of the Sunshine State. Carl's books are hilariously funny, while trying to make a point.

In one of his books, 1987's Double Whammy, Carl gives us R.J. Decker, a disgraced newspaper photographer turned private investigator. Decker is hired to investigate cheating in a Florida bass-fishing tournaments, which draws him into a dangerous, chaotic plot involving murder and a memorable character, the vigilante former governor Skink, who has one eye and lives under a bridge.

RJ Decker has been turned into a recurring ABC broadcast show based on Mr. Hiaasen's P.I. character who was once a news photographer for a Miami newspaper, played by Scott Speedman. Mr. Hiaasen is himself a journalist for  the Miami Herald. Many of Mr. Hiaasen's hilarious books have newspaper backdrops, and great South Beach colored pastel covers

 RJ is quite likeable with emerging facial growth that might some day be a better beard. He's a railroaded ex-con, who wears colorful floral shirts with no T-shirt, and was married to a woman who divorced hum to live with her lesbian detective wife. RJ tell us he always knew his wife was "bi".

While spending 18 months in jail protecting his manhood, RJ took courses and passed the test to become a licensed private investigator. However, being a convicted felon for beating up a robber breaking into his car to steal his cameras, who happened to be the troublesome son of a corrupt state senator with aspirations for the Governor's mansion, RJ cannot carry a handgun. But his brain works fine, and he helps solve some cases that his journalist wife's lesbian  detective is having trouble solving. RJ gets in the way quite often. But with good results. His ex graciously (there is no animosity between them) lets him live in the pool house since his trailer home fell into the sinkhole. in the trailer park. Home sweet home for Hiaasen's people.

We are first introduced to RJ as he sits on the courthouse steps admiring a wrapped candy bar. An attractive lithesome woman plops down next to him and with some suggestive talk we next see RJ in the back of his car in an empty, indoor parking garage having sex, steaming up the windows, with her emerging adjusting her dress, and RJ at least naked from the waist up, wondering what the hell just happened. If only it were that simple.

Turns out she's the step-sister of the youth RJ took out when he caught him trying to break into his car. It didn't matter that the kid "threw the first punch." RJ is found guilty, a verdict heavily sealed when the lithesome young woman testifies in court that RJ is the man who beat up her young step-brother. She felt sorry for him in the parking lot, since she knew where he'd be going after she left the witness stand.

It's great to finally see the imagination of Mr. Hiaasen come to the little box. The Florida settings are authentic, and not where the tourists are. Carl is listed as one of the many executive producers. What do all those executive producers do? Get paid, I guess.

I've been reading Mr. Hiaasen's books for years, and even re-reading them. I even read the YA books. Right now I'm re-reading Tourist Season where Brian Keyes, a former reporter for the Miami Sun tries to investigate the series of deaths being perpetuated on Florida residents and tourists by a wacko columnist for the paper, Skip Wiley. Skip leads a four member squad of nut jobs who are the Las Noches de Diciembre and have plans to disrupt the Orange Bowl parade and cause harm to the beauty queen.

Ship Wiley believes if he causes enough damage to the reputation of Florida, all the people who moved there in the past decades will leave and the state will revert to what he remembers it was like when he was a kid. The good old days. Everyone wants the good old days.

There are advantages to re-reading a book I have no memory of how it turns out. I don't have to buy another book. And, there is no addition to be made to the towering stack of books shown in my nightstand photo that approaches the ceiling.

The photo was taken in 2009, and still would be representative of the height, which means I have subtracted book as I've added. The stack drives my wife nuts, but we do not actually have room for another bookcase. I've love to have a stack of books frame a doorway and walls, but I'm not going to get away with that in this lifetime.

In one of many prior postings, I've remarked how Mr. Hiaasen uses what for me are to die for phrases. I'll try memorialize a few more here.

Viceroy Winston, a former running back for the Miami Dolphins, and a member of Las Noches de Diciembra crew, when happy, flashes his "touch down smile."

As he another member of the wacko brigade are casing out the beauty pageant as security guards, they come across some rehearsals of the contestants for the pageant.

"Viceroy Wilson had never seen such large bright teeth on a white person. You could tile swimming pool with teeth like that."

With a metaphor that, I'd like to go back add the swimming pool tile to the description of Good Day New York's  Tina Cervasio who can't stop preening and tossing her head and showing off her choppers.

The latest episode of RJ's encounters to solving a crime, are to interview people connected with being a high school's mascot dressed as a green sea cumber. Pure Florida. I don't know what the reviews are for RJ Decker, but it is an appealing show. With Mr. Hiaasen somewhere near the helm, it should get renewed. I'll be disappointed if it isn't

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