Skin Tight

Hiaasen turns his demented wit to the world of plastic surgery and tabloid television in Skin Tight but, as with his other thrillers, he includes a rich mixture of murder and the macabre. Reading a Hiaasen book is always a high-speed boat ride where laughter can turn to horror and disaster at any moment. Hearing the story aloud adds a dose of realism and sensation; these characters really could be driving around the streets of Miami. Wilson's narration is perfectly timed, laid-back and salty. He uses high-pitched vocalizations and slight tonal changes to indicate the various characters. Highly recommended for all popular fiction collections. J.L. (c)AudioFile, Portland, Maine

September 1, 1989
Hiaasen's latest thriller is his funniest and sharpest novel to date. Set in a south Florida swarming with ripoff artists, crooked cops, nude sunbathers and corrupt politicians, it features a Mafia-connected plastic surgeon with butterfingers, a bitchy Hollywood starlet, a remarkably inept hit man and a pompous TV journalist ``nationally famous for getting beaten up on camera.'' Retired state investigator Mick Stranahan, the hero, kills an intruder in his seaside house on stilts by impaling him with a trophy spearfish. Then one of his five ex-wives is found drowned. Due to an unresolved missing-person case, someone wants Stranahan eliminated, and his efforts to flush out the mixed bag of bad guys let Hiaasen ( Tourist Season ; Double Wham my ) display his manic sense of humor at every turn. The cynical sleuth has just the right mix of sour and smarts to get a fix on a mad world. This wickedly amusing story is the work of a keen satirist who off-handedly exposes the moral rot at every level of society. 50,000 first printing; $50,000 ad/promo; Literary Guild, Mystery Guild and Doubleday Book Club alternates.

December 1, 1993
Mick Stranahan, formerly employed by the Miami prosecutor's office, has had five wives and killed five men, and he is still an unhappy man. Forced into premature retirement for blowing the whistle on a crooked judge, Stranahan seeks disengagement from society and exiles himself to Stiltsville. It isn't long before the outside world intrudes, and he is dragged back into the cesspool of Miami corruption. An old unsolved case involving a young college coed's disappearance after a routine outpatient rhinoplasty in a swank plastic surgery factory comes back to haunt Stranahan and disrupt his self-satisfying ennui. In Hiaasen's world everyone is corrupt, and the world is awash in vanity and greed. Thanks to the author's offbeat sense of humor, however, the story is not unbearably oppressive. Reader George Wilson provides the perfect tone of understated irony. Wilson's characterizations are clever and clearly distinct. Recommended for most libraries with large crime/mystery collections.-- Jack McCleland, Brooklyn P.L.

Copyright 1993 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.