Paperback, 384 pages
Published May 11, 2021 by Vintage Crime/Black Lizard.
Much like The Onion, it's harder for Hiaasen to be ha-ha funny when reality keeps encroaching on the territory previously held by outrageous satire. This one’s still a lot of fun, thanks to a winning protagonist and a plot that ties its disparate zany stories together more adroitly than some of his books.
Another raucous romp from Hiaasen. Skink returns to unleash Burmese pythons on the oblivious president (code name: Mastodon) and his first lady (Mockingbird) while they are at their winter residence at Casa Bellicosa. Side plots, like the first lady's affair with her secret service man, the Potus Pussies' desperate attempts to get noticed by their hero, and protagonist Angie's scheme to get a wrongly imprisoned immigrant out of jail abound. Hilarious!
Hiaasen rarely disappoints. It's been a while since I've read any of his books, but my impression of this one that it's more jam packed with zaniness and irreverence than ever, while also being super topical.
Just as a minor tease (which you'll probably hear of anyways) some of the action happens in a Palm Beach club owned by an awful US president with the secret service codename Mastodon. The hero though is a wildlife removal specialist who went to jail because she fed a poacher's hand to an alligator ...
