Skinny Dip

Skinny Dip
by Carl Hiaasen

List Price: ~~$7.99~~
Our Price: $0.01
You Save: $7.98 (100%)
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Category: Book
See more book details and other editions

Book Summary Information

Author: Carl Hiaasen
Edition: Mass Market Paperback
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language); English (Published)
Published: 2006-05-01
ISBN: 0446615129
Number of pages: 512
Publisher: Grand Central Publishing

Book Reviews of Skinny Dip

Book Review: Great concept, good writing, but relies too heavily on "body" humor
Summary: 2 Stars

Okay, so I know that I am lame. I picked this book out based solely on the fact that I discovered that it was on Dr. Shephard's shelf. However, I saw it also came highly recommended. So I thought I'd check it out.

Plot:
Charles Perrone, a crooked marine biologist who drives a Hummer and doesn't recycle, dumps his wife, Joey, off a cruise ship into the Key West waters to die. Joey, a champion swimmer, however does not die and is rescued by first a bale of marijuana and then Mick Stanagan, a chronic divorcee and ex-cop. Ticked beyond reason, Joey wants to torment her husband.
Meanwhile, Charles spends most of his time behaving like an adolescent and getting freaked out by a curious cop, Rolvaag, who thinks the marine biologist is not quite what he seems, and his real employer, Red Hammernut, whose assets would be in danger if he actually implemented the environmental practices dictated by government ordnances.

Good:
This is a really good plot concept. Husband chucks wife into the ocean; wife swims to safety and decides to torment husband. Really inventive idea (but see below). Besides the fact that Jack Shephard had this book on his bookshelf, this was another reason I was excited to read this book.
Although some of the characters were heavily caricatured and hard to relate to, there were a few that I could connect with, namely Mick Stanagan and Karl Rolvaag. I liked how Carl Hiassen wrote them. Mick was the reclusive former cop (although, now that I think about it, he really doesn't act like a cop) who lends a helping hand to poor Joey. Further, I felt that Joey and Mick really had chemistry.
Karl Rolvaag was a very interesting character as well. His little plot line--moving to Minnesota and losing his pythons--made him very human. He really didn't have much point in the book and isn't moral enough to see justice carried out, but I still liked him.
Ricca, Chaz's girlfriend, was really fun. The way she tormented him...man! Her split with Chaz just proves that Chaz can't keep a woman longer than a night.

Bad:
Here are the points that really drive me nuts.
1. Despite the copious "laugh-out loud, screwball humor" quotes from the New York Times, People, Los Angeles Times Book Review, etc., I really didn't find a whole lot of this funny. Not gut-wrenching funny. More of like amusing, "Oh, that's weird" funny, if any type of funny at all. I don't think I cracked a grin, much less burst out into guffaws over any of the scenes in this book. So, this was rather disappointing to me.
2. This book must have been written with adolescent boys in mind. Before I read this, I thought Red Dwarf was bad. This book makes Red Dwarf look like monastery material. Every single chapter has some explicit sexual situation in it. While I understand that this is consistent with Chaz's character, I wished that the author had held back a little on his descriptions. After all, this is a mystery book.
3. The "bad guys" were pretty stupid and hicky. Red Hammernut spoke like a moron; I have no idea why presidents, governors, and the like would care to be seen around such an idiot. Tool had character, but he was rather far-fetched. His relationship with Maureen tried to bring the humanity out of him, but it was too late for the Mountain Dew-chugging, rear-end wounded crew boss turned bodyguard. Chaz was a self-absorbed, sex-obsessed teenager disguised as a doctor. He is so incompetent, he can't kill not once, but three times and has no idea what his degree entails. I don't see how Karl Rolvaag and his team could not get enough information on this rag-tag team of imbeciles to throw them away forever.
4. The "good guys" were somewhat flat. Joey seems to be a really competent woman with a good head on her shoulders, but I can't believe that she would have stuck with Chaz for as long as she did (what with Chaz's adolescent behavior). Mick is okay, but there really isn't enough of him to get into his mind. He is a loner on an island with so many divorces. Karl is just a cop more interested in moving than in doing his job well. It's a good thing he left or no case in Florida would ever be solved. Corbett is a strange sheepherder. When I say strange, I say hermit living in the boonies with long beards and staffs. Why is it when authors want to show a hermit they have to make him with long unkempt beards and staffs? I love nature too, but I also love having my hair nice, my nails kept, and makeup every once and awhile.
5. The plot concept was good, but got bogged down in recounting Chaz's sexual life, Tool's rear injury and idiosyncrasies, little episodes about Karl's move to Minnesota, Red's rantings, and all the strange, not quite explained things that Joey and Mick do to drive Chaz nuts. And then what should have been an ultimate showdown becomes an ultimate "let-down". If my husband had chucked me over a boat, I certainly wouldn't be taking the road that Joey did.

Dialogue/Sexual Situations/Violence:
F-word gets a real workout. There were 496 pages in my copy; the word appeared at least once on every page. That does not even include other foul language, such as sh**, d***, and rude terms for minorities (blacks, Hispanics, etc.). Sexual situations are about as frequent as the f-word is. In the approximately 30 chapters, some type of sexual situation--either from Chaz or Joey--or sexual innuendo is presented in somewhat graphic terms. Chaz has been cheating on his wife; Joey sleeps with another man. Violence is moderate--mostly reduced to a man who is afflicted with a bullet up his you-know-what, insinuated comments about how migrant workers were treated, and one person who ends up skewered.

Overall:
On the one hand, this is a well-written book. I finished it within a week and for an almost 500 page book, that is impressive (for me). Of course, the language wasn't that advanced and the writing easy, but still, it was catchy. Also, the plot moved forward--even when it got bogged down with Chaz's innumerable sexual exploits. The characters, although caricatures, talked like they should and not as if they planned their statements using a thesaurus. That said, I still think that too much of the plot centered on Chaz's sex life. The book needed to focus more on Joey's efforts and less on Chaz's sexual exploits.

Brought to you by:
*C.S. Light*

Write your own review

More Skinny Dip reviews:
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9

Summary of Skinny Dip

Marine biologist Chaz Perrone can't tell a sea horse from a sawhorse. And when he throws his beautiful wife, Joey, off a cruise liner, he really should know better. An expert swimmer, Joey makes her way to a floating bale of Jamaican pot-and then to an island inhabited by an ex-cop named Mick Stranahan, whose ex-wives include five waitresses and a TV producer. Now Joey wants to get revenge on Chaz and Mick's happy to help her.But in swampy South Florida, separating lies from truths and stupidity from brilliance isn't easy. Especially when you're after a guy like Chaz-who's bad at murder, great at fraud, and just terrible at getting caught...

Charles "Chaz" Perrone fancies himself a take-charge kind of guy. So when this "biologist by default" suspects that his curvaceous wife, Joey, has stumbled onto a profitable pollution scam he's running on behalf of Florida agribusiness mogul Red Hammernut, he sets out right away to solve the problem--by heaving Joey off the deck of a luxury cruise liner and into the Atlantic Ocean, far from Key West. But--whoops!--Joey, a former swimming champ, doesn't drown. Instead, as Carl Hiaasen tells in his 10th adult novel, Skinny Dip, she makes her way back to shore, thanks both to a wayward bale of Jamaican marijuana and lonerish ex-cop Mick Stranahan (Skin Tight, 1989), and then launches a bogus blackmail campaign that's guaranteed to drive her lazy, libidinous hubby into a self-protective frenzy.

You've got to hand it to Hiaasen: He's perfected a formula for crisply written, satirical crime fiction that makes the best use of imaginatively repulsive villains, as well as less thoroughly venal scoundrels and victims who ultimately overcome their antagonists, all while stumping for the preservation of Florida's environment, particularly the Everglades. In Skinny Dip, we find Chaz (who'd rather be golfing than puttering around the "hot, buggy, funky-smelling and treacherous" reaches of nature) falsifying water samples to help Hammernut turn the 'Glades into "God?s septic tank." That scheme, though, is endangered not just by Joey's sudden disappearance, but by the suspicions of a python-loving police detective and Chaz's own outstanding inability to tame his Viagra-enhanced tumescence. Even by assigning Chaz a baby-sitter--the hulking, hirsute, and painkiller-addicted Tool--Hammernut can't keep his pet biologist out of trouble. As Joey and Stranahan unfold their revenge plot, and Tool's conscience grows in competition with Chaz's ego, the reader can only marvel at the extent of the train wreck ahead.

As much fun as Hiaasen has delivering Chaz his climactic comeuppance, what's missing from Skinny Dip is a more complex, more credible development of Mick Stranahan's character and the relationship he builds with the much younger Joey Perrone. Like Erin Grant, from Strip Tease, Joey has far more going for her than her bra-cup size; but "hero" Stranahan is of far less interest here than any of his fellow players. --J. Kingston Pierce

Literature & Fiction Books

Book Subjects

Most talked about in Literature & Fiction Books

Little Women
by Louisa May Alcott
Scribner; Published: 1986-06-30; Paperback; Book
Best price: $3.49
Price in other shops: ~~$5.00~~

The Killing Ground
by JACK HIGGINS
HARPERCOLLINS PUBLISHERS LTD; Published: 2007; Hardcover; Book

Saving Fish from Drowning
by Amy Tan
4th Estate; Published: 2005; Paperback; Book

Life Expectancy
by Dean Koontz
Harpercollins Pb; Published: 2005-08-01; Paperback; Book
Best price: $6.00

Constant Princess
by Philippa Gregory
Touchstone/Simon & Schuster; Published: 2005; Hardcover; Book

Wolf of the Plains (Conqueror, Book 1)
by Conn Iggulden
Harper; Published: 2007; Paperback; Book

Sahara
by Clive Cussler
Harper Collins Pb; Published: 2005-03-21; Paperback; Book

Perelandra (Cosmic Trilogy)
by C. S. Lewis
Voyager; Published: 2005-11; Paperback; Book
Best price: $6.76
Price in other shops: ~~$10.50~~

The Lord Of The Rings: Part 2 The Two Towers
by J. R. R. Tolkien
Harper Collins Publishers; Published: 2001; Paperback; Book

Red Mars
by Kim Stanley Robinson
Trafalgar Square; Published: 2001-06; Paperback; Book