Stormy Weather (A Book Review)

I'm back home and will try to get around to checking in on everyone while I dig myself out of the pile I'm sure will be waiting for me on my desk this morning... Spoiler alert, I probably give away too much of the plot in my review of the book below.



Carl Hiassen, Stormy Weather (1995, released on Audiobooks in 2004, 14 hours and 8 minutes)
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A hurricane strikes southern Florida, releasing a menagerie from an exotic animal farm. Loose animals combined with a menagerie of characters assure us they’ll be almost as much damage from the events after the hurricane than from the storm itself (and a lot more laughs). To borrow a line from the Flim-Flam Man, “there is no way to beat an honest man in the skin game.” This isn’t a problem. There is not over abundance of honest men or women in South Florida, setting up opportunities for con-artists to con one another. In the end, they get their rewards: the good guys come out on top, the so-so guys break even and the really bad guys end up dead.
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The story starts with Max and Bonnie Lamb honeymooning at Disney World. In the aftermath of the storm, Max decides they should head south to get video of the destruction. There, with a very unhappy wife, he takes off with a video camera, gets attacked by a monkey who also steals his camera and ends up being kidnapped by a strange man who takes the shock collar off the monkey and places it on Max… Abandoned, Bonnie finds solace in Augustine, a strange but honest man. Augustine is looking for lost animals from his uncle’s farm (which he’d just inherited). As the plot unfolds, the two of them fall in love. Stink, the ex-governor of Florida, also plays a major role in this book. He’d been hoping for a large hurricane to clean up Southern Florida, but this isn’t quite it. He’s the one who kidnapped Max, finding him to be a lowlife, videotaping all the suffering going on.
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Another character to be thrown into the mix is Edie Marsh, who’s been in Florida in search of a Kennedy to blackmail. Running out of money, she joins together with a fellow con named “Snapper” to pull off a scam. They fake an accident in the yard of a home destroyed by the storm, hoping to rip the owner off of his insurance check. Unfortunately, the owner, a Hispanic mobile home salesman, is involved in his own con game and isn’t amused and, armed with a shotgun, escort the two into his house when he decides to have Edie play the role of his ex-wife in order to get the insurance money and scam before his real ex shows up demanding her share of the house. But, it turns out, that prior to the storm he’d sold a mobile home to the wrong person, an old woman whose son is a thug from Chicago. Before he gets to cash in on his insurance, the thug pays a visit and carries him off. His mutilated body is later found. With his disappearance, Edie and Snapper play the Hispanic couple and attempt to swindle the insurance money, but the adjuster comes when Snapper is away. Recognizing something fishy is up, Edie charms him. The married insurance adjuster falls for Edie and her favors and the two concoct a plan to split the insurance money. While this is going one, Snapper has a run in with the State Police, and seriously harms Jim Tile’s girlfriend. Tile is the trooper who had been assigned to Stink when he was governor. Tile is now trying to look out for Stink while looking for revenge from whoever attacked his girlfriend. In addition to all these characters, there’s the shady former roofing inspector who’s into voodoo and a roofing scam, two college students who are on their way home from the Keys, a group of hillbilly workmen heading south to try to get a cut in the roofing business, and the ex-wife of the mobile home salesman who is coming in for her cut in the profit. There are a few more characters, but without the book in hand, I can’t remember them all.
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In the end, it all works out and most of the bad guys get what they deserve. Bonnie and Augustine are together, Stink slips back into the swamp and Jim Tile’s girlfriend recovers. Max ends up with Edie. As or Snapper, the ex-governor takes care of him with a “Club” (a steering wheel locking device). Later, his skeleton remains are found and no one can figure out why his jaw is forced opened by a “Club”.
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This is my fifth Hiassen book. He's a great satirist. Although not as funny as some of his others (I think Skinny Dip is my favorite), I still found myself laughing out loud often. The book seems over populated with characters, a number of which disappear and we don’t know what happened to them. I listened to the unabridged version of the book on an ipod at the gym.