Number 63 - Squeeze Me - Carl Hiaasen

 The first time I read a Carl Hiaasen novel, I thought I was reading a sequel since the characters had such well developed backstories that were insinuated throughout the book.  It turned out it wasn't a sequel, it's just that Hiaasen can flesh out his characters to an insane degree, giving them entire life stories without ever slowing the pace of the story.

This one is no exception.

His political leanings have always been obvious in his books and he's an expert at not letting the environmental message get in the way of the story, and yet keeping it strong and obvious.

He's never featured the actual president of the USA as a character before though. He gets more openly political than anywhere outside of his newspaper columns in this riotous new offering. It's set in a fictitious timespan in between the end of the pandemic and the re-election campagn of the POTUS.

This opens, like so many of his other books, with the violent death of a random character.  In this case, it's Kiki Pew Fitzsimmons, 72 years old, "twice widowed and wealthy beyond a need for calculation". She vanishes from a fundraiser for the IBS Wellness foundation and is next seen as a large lump in the stomach of an 18 foot long Burmese Python.

 Kiki is (was) a member of the Potussies (short for POTUS Pussies), a group of dowager ladies who idolise the president and everything he stands for.

When the manager of venue hosting the fundraiser decides that the news of a giant snake eating the clientel might be bad for business, he decides to hide the truth. This kicks of a typically Hiaasen domino effect that gets wilder and funnier as it moves on.

Angela Armstrong is a wild animal removal expert. She was once a ranger but once dealt with a poacher in a somewhat overzealous manner. She is dragged into the procedings when she's asked to remove the snake - this is before the manager knows the location of the sweet(?) little old millionaire. It turns out she's every bit the typical Hiaasen protagonist, tough, princiipled and with an imaginiative take on natural justice.

Throw in a president (who's never named directly) who seems all too familiar, his wife and an amorous secret service agent, lost pearls, a pair of small time hoods, a falsely accused illegal immigrant and a psycho stalker, and you have a recipe for chaos. The multiple plot lines weave in and out of each other leading to a hilarious conclusion.

This is one of his most unpredicatble books in years, typically fast paced and funny and laced with a hefty dose of satire.  I can imagine this book will make a lot of people very angry, depending on their views about 45.  That's a good thing.  They deserve it. Those with a sensible view of the current incumbent will be laughing as loud as I was.

 Easy 8/10

Number 47 - Squirm - Carl Hiaasen

Carl Hiaasen is another of those authors I've been collecting books by for well over a decade.  As far as I know I have everything he's written, but I am a couple of books behind on reading his YA books. 

His fiction novels all tend to have either one or two word titles.  The two word titles are all adult novels.  The one word titles are for younger people. 

In practice this means that there's no swearing, no sex and the violence is kept offscreen in the one word titles.  They're still the same brand of easy to read lunacy, normally with a very strong environmental message built in.

This one is no exception.  Billy Dickens is a Floridan high school kid who loves wildlife, and just happens to collect snakes.  He won't stand any nonsense and will always fight for the underdog.  This is typical of Hiaasen's lead characters.

Within the first two pages you can't help but like young Billy regardless of how unlikely some of his behaviour may be.

This is a very good thing since Billy is the first person narrator, telling us most of the story in the present tense.

His dad walked out on the family when he was a toddler.  In the first couple of chapters he finds out where his dad lives and cons his mother into letting him fly across the USA to Montana to meet him. His dad turns out to be an eco warrior chasing after a particularly nasty big game hunter and spoiling his hunts.

 Even though this is 276 pages it flies past as if it was half that length.  The weakness of the first person narration is that the bad guy barely features at all, but Billy is such an entertaining narrator that that doesn't really matter.  The closing chapters contain some genuine tension and the message about wildlife preservation is crystral clear without being sledgehammer style unsubtle. 

It's predictable once the pieces start slipping into place, but it's not written for adults.  However, as YA fiction goes, it's easily substantial enough to keep me entertained.  If I wanted to, I could probably pick a plot hole or two - but see the end of the first sentence in this paragraph.  And it's so entertaining it would be churlish to do so anyway.

This is still available from all good booksellers and probably quite a few bad ones as well. 

He has a new adult novel due out in the next month or so, and I've already preordered it.