Readers of this book will not be disappointed on any of those counts. When Hiaasen sits down to write, you can be reasonably certain that there are crooked politicians and avaricious developers among the cast of characters. Like me, Hiaasen is a native Floridian and, also like me, he is appalled by what greed and empty-minded boosterism has done to the state. The satire flows in every paragraph, the word choices (and especially the adjectives) convey Hiaasen’s justifiable contempt for a large swath of humanity. ‘Bad Monkey’ is Carl Hiaasen at his best. What you want to do is just sit back and watch the master run the board.

You never know which balls are going to go where, and guessing isn’t going to help. When he’s ready, he lines up his shot and then expertly smacks that little white cue ball into the other nine. Reading a Carl Hiaasen novel is a lot like watching a master pool player put nine balls into a rack, then casually chalk his cue. But first Yancy will negotiate an ever-surprising course of events–from the Keys to Miami to a Bahamian out island–with a crew of equally ever-surprising characters, including: the twitchy widow of the frozen arm an avariciously idiotic real estate developer a voodoo witch whose lovers are blinded-unto-death by her particularly peculiar charms Yancy’s new love, a kinky medical examiner and the eponymous Bad Monkey, who earns his place among Hiaasen’s greatest characters with hilariously wicked aplomb. Yancy thinks the boating-accident/shark-luncheon explanation is full of holes, and if he can prove murder, his commander might relieve him of Health Inspector duties, aka Roach Patrol. There’s a logical (Hiaasenian) explanation for that, but not for how and why it parted from its owner. Carl Hiaasen is back doing what he does best: spinning a wickedly funny, fiercely pointed tale in which the greedy, the corrupt, and the degraders of pristine land in Florida–now, in the Bahamas too–get their comeuppance in mordantly ingenious, diabolically entertaining fashion.Īndrew Yancy–late of the Miami Police, soon-to-be-late of the Key West Police–has a human arm in his freezer.

Carl hiaasen hurricane