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The resulting story has more twists and turns than an invasive Burmese python, that apex predator of the gate-guarded McMansion development. It's screamingly funny, devilishly inventive, and deeply, profoundly satisfying. With *Fever Beach*, Hiaasen makes a compelling case for Florida as the perfect microcosm of the terrifying state of America, and an even more compelling case for his position as its supreme storyteller.
17/
Reading your summary of the characters I'm having the normal horrified reaction that yes he is describing reality.
Names have been changed to blur the poloroid of reality.
@GhostOnTheHalfShell @pluralistic, poloroid: a photograph in mint condition, except for the hole.
@pluralistic It was certainly timely and on target.
Hiaasen is the bomb. His most famous /notorious comment about Florida weird is that in every novel he created a character, usually the henchman, who is so over the top that they couldn't possibly be real.
But he writes about Florida and said invariably he will read the papers and find somebody at least as absurd as the henchman he created.
I've been a Hiaasen fan ever since I read 'Sick Puppy' [more a decade ago?]. Without a doubt one of the most gifted crime/comedy writers of all time. His novels are full of rich characters, inventive and twisty plots. 'Fever Beach' is one of his best!
@pluralistic Fever Beach and Enshittification are my top two reads of 2025. Amazing to see that you're a Carl fan!
Hiaasen is a crime novelist who got his start as a newspaper writer, writing columns about Florida's, ah, *unique* politics - and sublime, emperilled wilderness - for the *Miami Herald*. That beat, combined with enormous humor and literary talent, produced a writer who perfectly hybridizes Dave Barry's lovable absurdism with the hard-boiled pastoralism of the Travis McGee novels (Hiaasen wrote the introductions for a 1990s reissue of all of John D McDonald's *McGee* books).
2/
@pluralistic Carl Hiaasen reminisces about a trip to the native homeland https://www.wanderlustmagazine.com/inspiration/carl-hiaasen-world/
"My family is from Norway originally. I went there on a book tour years ago. I believe it was January. I’m a Florida guy and, let me tell you, January in Oslo was tough. There’s a tiny place that has the same name as I do, Hiåsen, though it’s spelt and pronounced differently. It’s around 100 kilometres out of Oslo."
Hiaasen's method is diabolical and hilarious: each volume introduces a bewildering cast of odd, crooked, charming, and/or loathsome Floridians drawn from his long experience chronicling the state and its misadventures. Every one of these people is engaged in some form of skulduggery, even the heroes, who are every bit as lawless and wild as their adversaries, though Hiaasen's protagonists are always smarter and more competent than his villains.
3/
The plots and schemes play out like an intricate clock that has been much-elaborated by a mad clockmaker with an affinity for eccentric gears, all set against the background of Florida, a glorious and beautiful place being fed into a woodchipper powered by unchecked greed and depravity.
4/
After 20-some volumes in this vein (including *Bad Monkey*, lately adapted for Apple TV), something far weirder than anything Hiaasen ever dreamed up came to pass: Donald Trump, the most Florida Man ever, was elected president. If you asked an LLM to write a Hiaasen novel, you might get Trump: a hacky, unimaginative version of the wealthy, callous, scheming grifters of the Hiaasenverse.
5/
Back in 2020, Hiaasen wrote Trump into *Squeeze Me*, a tremendous and madcap addition to his canon:
https://pluralistic.net/2020/10/05/florida-man/#disappearing-act
*Fever Beach* is the first Hiaasen novel since *Squeeze Me*, and boy, does Hiaasen ever have MAGA's number.
6/
The book revolves around a classic Hiaasen bumbler, Dale Figgo, an incompetent white nationalist who was kicked out of the Proud Boys after the Jan 6 insurrection, when he mistook a statue of a revered Confederate general for Ulysses S Grant (it was the beard) and released a video of himself smearing shit all over it.
7/
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