Skinny Dip
Encyclopedia
Skinny Dip is a caper novel by Carl Hiaasen
first published in 2004
.
in the course of April, 2003
, it is about a woman, Joey Perrone, who takes revenge on her cheating husband after he has tried to murder her. It is also one of Hiaasen’s more topical novels, since the plot also revolves around the ongoing restoration of the Everglades
to a natural habitat
.
is someone who swims in the nude, thus showing all their skin. Skinny Dip refers to the fact that when Joey Perrone is thrown overboard the impact when hitting the surface of the water tears off all her clothes so that on the following morning her rescuer finds her not only completely exhausted but also stark naked. Also, throughout the novel people find themselves in embarrassing situations due to their — occasionally inexplicable — nakedness.
whose expertise in his field is marginal, and whose interest in it is nonexistent. Since his adolescence, he has devoted his life solely to the lazy pursuit of money, sex, golf, and an otherwise undisturbed, pleasurable existence devoid of any intellectual ambitions, or the urge to explore and experience the great outdoors. His main source of personal pride seems to be his sexual stamina. Despite his marriage to Joey, a beautiful and rich woman, he frequently has affairs with other women.
Chaz’s insatiable greed drives him to collude with Samuel Johnson “Red” Hammernut, a crooked farm tycoon who owns large vegetable fields adjacent to the Everglades, which he relentlessly pollutes with fertilizer
run-off. Officially employed by the state authorities to test swamp water for pollutants, Perrone is secretly also on Hammernut's payroll, forging the test results and allowing Hammernut to avoid having to cut back on his overuse of fertilizers, or spend large amounts of money on purification plants
. Perrone's worst days at work are those when he actually has to leave his office and make field trips and wade in to the Everglades to take water samples.
One day Joey Perrone returns home unexpectedly while her husband is filling in the doctored figures on a chart. As she has never taken any interest in her husband's work, Joey has no idea what he is doing, but Chaz is so paranoid that he is seized by a sudden fear that she might report him. Eventually, Perrone sees no other way out of his imagined predicament than to kill his wife. He begins to meticulously plan the perfect murder
.
For their second wedding anniversary
he invites his wife on a cruise
and one night, while they are out at sea, throws her overboard. Having been an excellent swimmer all her life, Joey survives, managing to turn her fall into a dive, and then swimming toward the Florida coast. As her strength gives out, she clings to a floating bale of marijuana
for several hours, and is picked up early the next morning.
Her rescuer is Mick Stranahan, 53, a former investigator with the State Attorney who was forced into early retirement
. Stranahan lives on a small island
in Biscayne Bay
off the Florida coast owned by a successful but aging Mexican
novelist. Stranahan, who has been married six times, is now in the novelist's pay as a caretaker, leading a solitary life guarding the island and "mak[ing] up for all the years of foolish companionship." Having cut down his trips to the mainland to an absolute minimum, he has hardly any means of contact with the rest of the world except an unreliable mobile phone
. His only companion is an inefficient Dobermann
called Strom
.
After a few days the search for Joey Perrone is called off, and she is presumed dead. Chaz pretends to be a grieving husband. As no witnesses come forward, the authorities accept his suggestion that Joey either had an accident — Chaz having testified that she had had quite a lot to drink that night — or committed suicide
. Karl Rolvaag, the Broward County Sheriff’s detective investigating the disappearance, is suspicious of Chaz’s too-rehearsed grief and pat answers, but can find no motive supporting a suspicion of murder. Joey was rich, but Chaz wasn’t in her will; and if he wanted to dump her for another woman, divorce would have been quick and easy.
Joey is equally baffled, and begs Stranahan not to report that she is still alive. Since she has no idea yet why he tried to kill her, she doubts that she can convince the police that it wasn’t a drunken accident or attempted suicide. Instead, she wants to find out herself why he did it, and drive her husband to insanity by building on his vanity
and paranoia
. Stranahan agrees.
Joey starts by entering their house while Chaz is at work and leaving traces of herself — negligees, a photo of herself and Chaz (with her face cut out). Chaz is unsettled enough by these clues that he experiences impotence for the first time in his life, which leaves him greatly flustered. Joey happens to be hiding under the bed when Chaz returns unexpectedly with one of his girlfriends and fails to perform with her.
Hammernut, worried by Chaz’s reports of a home intruder, orders one of his employees, an illiterate, heavy-set and hairy man called Earl Edward O'Toole, to act as Perrone's bodyguard. As Chaz’s mental state deteriorates, O’Toole’s job description changes to “babysitter,” to prevent Chaz from exposing Hammernut. "Tool", as O'Toole is called by everybody, collects highway fatality markers, and has been addicted
to fentanyl, a potent painkiller, ever since he was hit by a rifle bullet that remains embedded just underneath his tailbone.
Tool visits nursing home
s, pretending to be an employee, and steals fentanyl skin patches off elderly patients' bodies. During one of these expeditions, Tool meets Maureen, a dying woman with whom he develops a friendly relationship.
Joey and Stranahan soon develop a sexual relationship and continue to plan more intricate and sophisticated acts of revenge. Stranahan has the idea of pretending to blackmail
Chaz, by inventing a witness to Joey’s murder.
Chaz is unnerved when a mysterious phone caller seems to know every detail of that night. He concludes that only Rolvaag could know so much about it. He confronts the detective with his accusation ("Can we please cut all this ridiculous bullshit? Just tell me how much you want.") The baffled detective becomes even more suspicious of Chaz.
Stranahan also recruits his brother-in-law, a corrupt lawyer, to draft a fake will leaving Joey’s entire fortune to Chaz. Delivering this to Chaz and to the police has the double effect of playing on Chaz’s vanity and greed, and energizing the stagnating investigation.
Chaz’s judgment deteriorates further with each passing day, and he erroneously concludes that his current mistress, Ricca, a hairdresser, is the blackmailer's girlfriend and accomplice. At gunpoint, Perrone drives her out to the swamp at Loxahatchee
where, in the dark, he fires away at her. Though he only manages to wing her in the leg, Ricca plunges into the water and seemingly drowns. Unknown to Chaz, she survives and is rescued by an eccentric Vietnam
veteran
who considers the Everglades his home.
Both Stranahan and Rolvaag, working independently, trace the bill of sale of Chaz’s expensive Hummer
to one of Hammernut's companies, and patient investigation leads them to discover the Everglades scam.
Rolvaag does not share his conclusions with his captain: there is no evidence directly linking the scam to Joey’s disappearance, but Rolvaag is confident that Chaz is doomed anyway. In his paranoid state, Chaz is likely to break down and confess to the scam to minimize his own punishment, while Hammernut is likely to foresee this and have Chaz eliminated. Rolvaag has even discovered hints that Joey is still alive — her credit card has been used to buy women's clothes and accessories
— but does not share this with Chaz.
Meanwhile, a few friends and relatives are let in on the true state of affairs and play along with Stranahan and Joey. Her brother Corbett, a reclusive sheep farmer in New Zealand
flies to Miami and gleefully arranges more surprises for Chaz: he hires a squadron of helicopters to buzz Chaz’s Hummer on his way to the Everglades, parodying a scene from Goodfellas
, and then arranges a memorial service for Joey at which Chaz is expected to give a speech. Chaz gets up to deliver a tear jerker eulogy, but collapses with fright when Ricca enters the church on crutches and sits next to Rolvaag in the audience.
Joey’s other accomplice is her sexy friend from her book club, Rose Jewell, who approaches Chaz after the memorial service and offers to console him over dinner at her place. Expecting an easy lay and opportunity to show off his sexual prowess, Chaz accepts the invitation, only to be drugged by Rose and put to sleep in her bed.
Only half awake, he thinks he is hallucinating
when he finds his presumably dead wife sitting at his side asking him reproachfully why he has tried to murder her. He confesses the truth, that he thought she had figured out his scam. She says she had no idea what he was doing, and he groggily responds, “So maybe I overreacted.”
The following morning Chaz wakes up from his drug-induced slumber sitting naked at the wheel of his Hummer, which has been parked on the shoulder of a busy road during rush hour
. Later he receives a video
allegedly recorded on the night of the murder showing his crime, a film in which he clearly recognizes his wife although he can see himself only from behind. The cassette includes a message summoning him to a rendezvous to deliver the blackmail money.
The final showdown takes place at night out in the open sea during a heavy thunderstorm
. Following the blackmailer's instructions, Perrone rents a small boat with an outboard motor
and, together with Tool, drives to Stiltsville
, a former community of wooden houses built on pilings that was eradicated by Hurricane Andrew
. This is the spot where he is supposed to hand over a suitcase containing $500,000. Hammernut, who has provided the money, has instructed Tool to kill Perrone well before the encounter with the blackmailer and return the suitcase to him, but Tool has other plans: inspired by Maureen, he wants to abandon his life of crime, reform, and become a respectable citizen. However, before the blackmailers appear on the scene, Perrone shoots Tool, who falls into the water but, again unknown to Perrone, survives.
While Stranahan and Corbett are pulling Tool out of the water, Joey appears in the flesh and confronts her husband. Chaz is mortified — Joey is alive and on her way to the police, his scam with Red has been blown wide open, and last but not least, the will leaving Joey’s fortune to him has been a fake from the beginning. Joey is tempted to shoot him, but, following Mick’s instructions, tells him to get lost. Chaz flees in the boat.
Chaz safely arrives at the mainland with the money and immediately drives home. His new plan is to compose a suicide note
("Tonight I shall reunite with my beloved"), disappear and start a new life in Costa Rica
. But before he can leave he is snatched out of his house by Hammernut and Tool (tipped off by Ricca), hog-tied, and driven to the Everglades. Stranahan and Joey have used the blackmail money as the perfect bait — Chaz couldn’t resist the opportunity to grab it, and Hammernut concludes that the “blackmail” was just a con by Chaz to rip him off.
When Hammernut orders Tool to shoot Chaz, Tool deliberately misses and the biologist escapes into the swamp. On the way home to Hammernut's farm the entrepreneur insults Tool, who takes revenge on his boss in the middle of nowhere by slaying him and impaling his body on one of roadside crosses of the same type that Tool collects.
Joey Perrone decides to stay with Stranahan on the island. Corbett has taken an interest in Ricca, and invites her to share some time on his farm in New Zealand. Rolvaag finally closes the case and moves back to his native Minnesota
. Before he goes, Rose tells him her mother lives in Minnetonka and coquettishly invites him to lunch the next time she’s in town.
In the end, Tool is left with all the money. He decides to spend the first part of it on a vet
who removes two bullets from his body, and on a new, comfortable pickup truck
in which he embarks on a trip to Canada
. He takes along Maureen, who he has rescued from the nursing home at her request, and who wants to see the pelican
s migrating.
In the book’s final pages, Chaz is picked up by the semi-deranged Vietnam veteran, who knows all about him through his encounter with Ricca. No description is given of Chaz’s ultimate fate, but several clues are dropped. In response to Chaz’s limp enquiry about what happens next, the veteran quotes Tennyson: “Nature, red in tooth and claw.”
and comic mainstream
novels depicting people in difficult and outrageous situations triggered by human weaknesses such as greed, lust
, ignorance
, or revenge.
commented that, at the center of all the wackiness was an accessible, touching storyline: a single mother’s quest to rescue her young daughter from a reckless husband and an inadequate foster care system. Skinny Dip has at its center a wife who survives a murder attempt by her husband, and is driven not just by the need to get even, but to find out the reason he did it. This gives the novel more focus than some of Hiaasen’s other books, which often involve the characters running across each other in random ways, or going on unplanned wanderings across Florida.
The other central plot is the fight to save the Everglades, and the role that the villains are playing in its destruction. Somewhere along the way, the two plot lines converge, and the quest to take revenge on Chaz becomes tied up with the aim of stopping Red’s pollution.
In other words, the reader is offered a choice of which thing to root for: some readers may think that Chaz’s betrayal of the environment for money makes him detestable, but trying to murder his wife is what makes him a true monster; other readers may think the exact opposite.
Skinny Dip is also enriched by a variety of subplots: Tool's gradual moral awakening, as he grows closer to a dying old lady who is too proud to admit that she has been abandoned by her family; Karl Rolvaag's longing for his native Minnesota, and his search for his escaped pet pythons; Chaz’s obsession with sex and his desperate attempts to reverse the erectile dysfunction
which is his only sign of guilt over Joey’s murder, including experimenting with a black-market version of Viagra — "the Food and Drug Administration
(FDA) definitely would not approve."; and finally, the suitcase full of money, which changes hands until it falls into the grip of the least likely person in the story.
The novel contains many scenes reminiscent of classic farce
s. For instance, at one point there are five people in the Perrone house, three of whom are trying to hide their presence from the other: at the center is Chaz and his “back-up” girlfriend Medea, with whom he has just unsuccessfully attempted sexual relations; hiding under the bed is Joey, caught in the middle of another infiltration of the house; Tool is in another part of the house, ordered to protect Perrone but ordered by him to stay out of the way of his date; and finally Mick, who enters in search of Joey and, when he encounters Tool, politely asks him if he’s going to try and stop Mick. (“What a dumb-ass question. Of course I am.”)
In a similar situation, Chaz, expecting sex with Rose, is drunk and drugged and lured into bed, not knowing that the woman he’s groping for is in fact his wife.
Other funny situations arise out of Chaz’s paranoia and ineptness as a killer. He imagines he’s surrounded by enemies, but he always manages to look in the wrong direction. Even when the truth — for example, Joey — is right in front of him, he attributes it to hallucinations caused by the West Nile virus
, rather than recognizing it for a sophisticated hoax.
As usual, Hiaasen divides the characters into those who like nature, and those who don’t. The ones who like it the most have often been beaten around by society, and choose to make the great outdoors their permanent home. Mick, after years as a cop in the city, likes nothing better than fishing off his island. On the other hand, the lone Vietnam veteran has seemingly lost the fight against his adversaries, and run away. However, we are pointed to the fact that, unlike the villains, he lives a sustainable
life absolutely in tune with nature, without depleting any natural resources or polluting the environment.
The villains, of course, only think of nature as an obstacle or a resource to be exploited. They are often portrayed as so steeped in corruption and greed that they think of themselves as heroes, or at least as normal guys, through an “everybody does it” rationalization. Red Hammernut is a corporate fat cat who inherited the building blocks of his fortune from his father and reaps his profits through the overindulgence of the state; yet he thinks only of all the “work” he has to do — handing out campaign donations, overseeing his labor force of indentured migrants, lobbying around or avoiding pollution laws — and sees himself as a hard-working “American farmer.”
Likewise, Chaz sees absolutely nothing wrong with his role in helping Hammernut continue to pollute the Everglades:
Chaz Perrone is one of Hiaasen’s funniest villains. The novel's jacket introduces him as "[maybe] the only marine biologist who doesn't know which way the Gulf Stream
runs" and this is the key to his character. Like all Hiaasen bad guys, he is lazy, amoral, greedy, illiterate, and averse to nature, but unlike the others his particular corruption forces him to pose in a role for which he is spectacularly unsuited.
As a "scientist" for the water management district, his standard kit for collecting water samples includes his Hummer
(bright yellow, “to freak out any panthers that might be lurking,” despite the fact that Florida panther
s are both colorblind and nearly extinct), and a golf club, which he swings wildly around him to scare away any nearby fish, birds, or reptiles before he’ll set foot in the water. (“He would have carried a high-caliber rifle, except it was strictly forbidden[.]”)
What makes Chaz so funny is that he’s too vain to realize what an obvious fake he is, and thus his attempts to appear sophisticated, suave, or innocent only dig him in deeper: on the strength of his PhD he arrogantly insists on being addressed as “Dr. Perrone” then immediately has to explain that he’s not an M.D. (especially to Tool, who keeps bugging him for prescription drugs). His flippant error about the direction of the Gulf Stream is made to Detective Rolvaag, and reveals a gap in his credentials as a scientist; in subsequent conversations with the detective, Chaz jokes about running over snakes on the highway, tells Rolvaag to throw his soda can in the trash, and can’t even identify the fish in his own aquarium — “Do I look like frigging Jacques Cousteau?”
What’s funniest is his “fabulous inefficiency” as a killer. At his first attempt, he tosses his wife overboard at sea, forgetting that she’s a champion swimmer; at his second, he is so inexperienced with guns that he can’t hit Ricca with a pistol shot from thirty feet away; at his third, he shoots Tool at point blank range, yet only manages to wound him in the armpit. Each of these three persons survives, and resurfaces to take part in the revenge plot against him.
Yet it should not be missed that, psychologically at least, Chaz is perfectly capable of murder. He’s so egocentric that he’s incapable of real feeling for anyone, whether it’s his wife, his mistress, or his own mother. Chaz has no attachment to Joey except as a sex object (though that attachment is strong enough to cripple his libido after she’s gone). Not only does he toss her overboard at sea, afterwards he blandly gathers all her belongings and clothes and dumps them in the garbage — as Joey tearfully says, “sweeping me out the door like I was dirt.”
Joey is everything Chaz isn’t: smart, classy, observant, sensitive, and subtle — once she finally admits to herself how worthless her husband is, she knows exactly where to probe his weaknesses and send him into a psychological corkscrew.
Another persistent theme of Hiaasen’s books is that his villains share bad qualities that lead them down self-destructive paths. First, there’s Chaz’s paranoia, which is so intense that he decides to murder Joey because he (incorrectly) assumes she has figured out his scam, thereby setting in motion the whole chain of events that leads to his destruction. Second, there’s his greed: when the chance to escape with the blackmail money is offered, he grabs at it, exposing himself to Hammernut’s revenge. Third, there’s his arrogance and vanity, which makes him totally incapable of stopping and analyzing what he’s doing wrong, and thus stopping suspicion from piling on in Rolvaag’s mind.
, Washington Post reporter Michael Grunwald criticized the book as being too-fictionalized, and potentially misleading, in describing the causes of the Everglades’ ecological status. In Hiaasen’s scenario, the Everglades are dying as a result of agricultural contaminants dumped by greedy corporate villains, aided and abetted by corrupt or complacent officials.
Grunwald maintains that the state effort to curtail agricultural pollution is separate from the Everglades Restoration Project, and had been largely successful even before the Project commenced in 2000. Instead, the biggest threat to the Everglades comes not from corporate pollution or corrupt officials, but rather from "John Q. Public" — the diversion of freshwater for South Florida’s huge municipalities, and the normal waste products associated with such cities. Grunwald says that when conservation efforts should focus on curtailing the effects of public activity, it is misleading and dangerous to lay all the blame on "bad guys" personified by Red Hammernut and Chaz.
On the other hand, Grunwald agrees that it is "smart to be cynical" about Florida politics, "especially all the daily blathering about conserving our precious natural resources." A recurring theme in Grunwald’s book, The Swamp, is that for the majority of Florida’s history, the Everglades has been viewed as a hostile territory, a nuisance, or an obstacle to growth, and only very recently has perception changed to regard it as a place worth saving.
Hiaasen is also scathing about this in the chapter when he briefly summarizes the history of the Everglades, and how ninety percent of it has been destroyed through the course of South Florida’s development:
But later, it became clear that the Everglades’ health was linked to South Florida’s drinking water, and if the Everglades died, then growth would stop dead:
Carl Hiaasen
Carl Hiaasen is an American journalist, columnist and novelist.- Early years :Born in 1953 and raised in Plantation, Florida, of Norwegian heritage, Hiaasen was the first of four children and the son of a lawyer, Kermit Odel, and teacher, Patricia...
first published in 2004
2004 in literature
The year 2004 in literature involved some significant events and new books.-Events:* Canada Reads selects Guy Vanderhaeghe's The Last Crossing to be read across the nation....
.
Plot introduction
Set in South FloridaFlorida
Florida is a state in the southeastern United States, located on the nation's Atlantic and Gulf coasts. It is bordered to the west by the Gulf of Mexico, to the north by Alabama and Georgia and to the east by the Atlantic Ocean. With a population of 18,801,310 as measured by the 2010 census, it...
in the course of April, 2003
April 2003
April 2003: January – February – March – April – May – June – July – August – September – October – November – December-April 1, 2003:...
, it is about a woman, Joey Perrone, who takes revenge on her cheating husband after he has tried to murder her. It is also one of Hiaasen’s more topical novels, since the plot also revolves around the ongoing restoration of the Everglades
Restoration of the Everglades
The restoration of the Everglades is an ongoing effort to remedy damage inflicted on the environment of southern Florida during the 20th century. It is the most expensive and comprehensive environmental repair attempt in history. The degradation of the Everglades became an issue in the United...
to a natural habitat
Habitat (ecology)
A habitat is an ecological or environmental area that is inhabited by a particular species of animal, plant or other type of organism...
.
Explanation of the novel's title
A skinny-dipperSkinny dipping
Nude swimming, colloquially called skinny dipping, is a term used to describe swimming naked.-Etymology:The term skinny dip, first recorded in English in the 1950s, includes the somewhat archaic word skinny, known since 1573, meaning "having to do with skin", as it exposed the naked...
is someone who swims in the nude, thus showing all their skin. Skinny Dip refers to the fact that when Joey Perrone is thrown overboard the impact when hitting the surface of the water tears off all her clothes so that on the following morning her rescuer finds her not only completely exhausted but also stark naked. Also, throughout the novel people find themselves in embarrassing situations due to their — occasionally inexplicable — nakedness.
Plot summary
Charles Regis “Chaz” Perrone, Ph.D., is a young, handsome marine biologistMarine biology
Marine biology is the scientific study of organisms in the ocean or other marine or brackish bodies of water. Given that in biology many phyla, families and genera have some species that live in the sea and others that live on land, marine biology classifies species based on the environment rather...
whose expertise in his field is marginal, and whose interest in it is nonexistent. Since his adolescence, he has devoted his life solely to the lazy pursuit of money, sex, golf, and an otherwise undisturbed, pleasurable existence devoid of any intellectual ambitions, or the urge to explore and experience the great outdoors. His main source of personal pride seems to be his sexual stamina. Despite his marriage to Joey, a beautiful and rich woman, he frequently has affairs with other women.
Chaz’s insatiable greed drives him to collude with Samuel Johnson “Red” Hammernut, a crooked farm tycoon who owns large vegetable fields adjacent to the Everglades, which he relentlessly pollutes with fertilizer
Fertilizer
Fertilizer is any organic or inorganic material of natural or synthetic origin that is added to a soil to supply one or more plant nutrients essential to the growth of plants. A recent assessment found that about 40 to 60% of crop yields are attributable to commercial fertilizer use...
run-off. Officially employed by the state authorities to test swamp water for pollutants, Perrone is secretly also on Hammernut's payroll, forging the test results and allowing Hammernut to avoid having to cut back on his overuse of fertilizers, or spend large amounts of money on purification plants
Purification
Purification is the process of rendering something pure, i.e. clean of foreign elements and/or pollution, and may refer to:* List of purification methods in chemistry* Water purification** Organisms used in water purification...
. Perrone's worst days at work are those when he actually has to leave his office and make field trips and wade in to the Everglades to take water samples.
One day Joey Perrone returns home unexpectedly while her husband is filling in the doctored figures on a chart. As she has never taken any interest in her husband's work, Joey has no idea what he is doing, but Chaz is so paranoid that he is seized by a sudden fear that she might report him. Eventually, Perrone sees no other way out of his imagined predicament than to kill his wife. He begins to meticulously plan the perfect murder
Perfect murder (fiction)
The perfect murder is a murder which benefits the murderer, but also has no negative consequences for him or her; usually, this simply means that the murderer is never caught...
.
For their second wedding anniversary
Wedding anniversary
-Official recognition:In the Commonwealth realms, one can receive a message from the monarch for 60th, 65th, and 70th wedding anniversaries, and any wedding anniversary after that...
he invites his wife on a cruise
Cruising (maritime)
Cruising by boat is a lifestyle that involves living for extended time on a boat while traveling from place to place for pleasure. Cruising generally refers to trips of a few days or more, and can extend to round-the-world voyages.- History :...
and one night, while they are out at sea, throws her overboard. Having been an excellent swimmer all her life, Joey survives, managing to turn her fall into a dive, and then swimming toward the Florida coast. As her strength gives out, she clings to a floating bale of marijuana
Cannabis (drug)
Cannabis, also known as marijuana among many other names, refers to any number of preparations of the Cannabis plant intended for use as a psychoactive drug or for medicinal purposes. The English term marijuana comes from the Mexican Spanish word marihuana...
for several hours, and is picked up early the next morning.
Her rescuer is Mick Stranahan, 53, a former investigator with the State Attorney who was forced into early retirement
Retirement
Retirement is the point where a person stops employment completely. A person may also semi-retire by reducing work hours.Many people choose to retire when they are eligible for private or public pension benefits, although some are forced to retire when physical conditions don't allow the person to...
. Stranahan lives on a small island
Island
An island or isle is any piece of sub-continental land that is surrounded by water. Very small islands such as emergent land features on atolls can be called islets, cays or keys. An island in a river or lake may be called an eyot , or holm...
in Biscayne Bay
Biscayne Bay
Biscayne Bay is a lagoon that is approximately 35 miles long and up to 8 miles wide located on the Atlantic coast of South Florida, United States. It is usually divided for purposes of discussion and analysis into three parts: North Bay, Central Bay, and South Bay. Its area is...
off the Florida coast owned by a successful but aging Mexican
Mexico
The United Mexican States , commonly known as Mexico , is a federal constitutional republic in North America. It is bordered on the north by the United States; on the south and west by the Pacific Ocean; on the southeast by Guatemala, Belize, and the Caribbean Sea; and on the east by the Gulf of...
novelist. Stranahan, who has been married six times, is now in the novelist's pay as a caretaker, leading a solitary life guarding the island and "mak[ing] up for all the years of foolish companionship." Having cut down his trips to the mainland to an absolute minimum, he has hardly any means of contact with the rest of the world except an unreliable mobile phone
Mobile phone
A mobile phone is a device which can make and receive telephone calls over a radio link whilst moving around a wide geographic area. It does so by connecting to a cellular network provided by a mobile network operator...
. His only companion is an inefficient Dobermann
Dobermann
The Doberman Pinscher or simply Doberman, is a breed of domestic dog originally developed around 1890 by Karl Friedrich Louis Dobermann. Doberman Pinschers are among the most common of pet breeds, and the breed is well known as an intelligent, alert, and loyal companion dog...
called Strom
Strom Thurmond
James Strom Thurmond was an American politician who served as a United States Senator. He also ran for the Presidency of the United States in 1948 as the segregationist States Rights Democratic Party candidate, receiving 2.4% of the popular vote and 39 electoral votes...
.
After a few days the search for Joey Perrone is called off, and she is presumed dead. Chaz pretends to be a grieving husband. As no witnesses come forward, the authorities accept his suggestion that Joey either had an accident — Chaz having testified that she had had quite a lot to drink that night — or committed suicide
Suicide
Suicide is the act of intentionally causing one's own death. Suicide is often committed out of despair or attributed to some underlying mental disorder, such as depression, bipolar disorder, schizophrenia, alcoholism, or drug abuse...
. Karl Rolvaag, the Broward County Sheriff’s detective investigating the disappearance, is suspicious of Chaz’s too-rehearsed grief and pat answers, but can find no motive supporting a suspicion of murder. Joey was rich, but Chaz wasn’t in her will; and if he wanted to dump her for another woman, divorce would have been quick and easy.
Joey is equally baffled, and begs Stranahan not to report that she is still alive. Since she has no idea yet why he tried to kill her, she doubts that she can convince the police that it wasn’t a drunken accident or attempted suicide. Instead, she wants to find out herself why he did it, and drive her husband to insanity by building on his vanity
Vanity
In conventional parlance, vanity is the excessive belief in one's own abilities or attractiveness to others. Prior to the 14th century it did not have such narcissistic undertones, and merely meant futility. The related term vainglory is now often seen as an archaic synonym for vanity, but...
and paranoia
Paranoia
Paranoia [] is a thought process believed to be heavily influenced by anxiety or fear, often to the point of irrationality and delusion. Paranoid thinking typically includes persecutory beliefs, or beliefs of conspiracy concerning a perceived threat towards oneself...
. Stranahan agrees.
Joey starts by entering their house while Chaz is at work and leaving traces of herself — negligees, a photo of herself and Chaz (with her face cut out). Chaz is unsettled enough by these clues that he experiences impotence for the first time in his life, which leaves him greatly flustered. Joey happens to be hiding under the bed when Chaz returns unexpectedly with one of his girlfriends and fails to perform with her.
Hammernut, worried by Chaz’s reports of a home intruder, orders one of his employees, an illiterate, heavy-set and hairy man called Earl Edward O'Toole, to act as Perrone's bodyguard. As Chaz’s mental state deteriorates, O’Toole’s job description changes to “babysitter,” to prevent Chaz from exposing Hammernut. "Tool", as O'Toole is called by everybody, collects highway fatality markers, and has been addicted
Substance dependence
The section about substance dependence in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders does not use the word addiction at all. It explains:...
to fentanyl, a potent painkiller, ever since he was hit by a rifle bullet that remains embedded just underneath his tailbone.
Tool visits nursing home
Nursing home
A nursing home, convalescent home, skilled nursing unit , care home, rest home, or old people's home provides a type of care of residents: it is a place of residence for people who require constant nursing care and have significant deficiencies with activities of daily living...
s, pretending to be an employee, and steals fentanyl skin patches off elderly patients' bodies. During one of these expeditions, Tool meets Maureen, a dying woman with whom he develops a friendly relationship.
Joey and Stranahan soon develop a sexual relationship and continue to plan more intricate and sophisticated acts of revenge. Stranahan has the idea of pretending to blackmail
Blackmail
In common usage, blackmail is a crime involving threats to reveal substantially true or false information about a person to the public, a family member, or associates unless a demand is met. It may be defined as coercion involving threats of physical harm, threat of criminal prosecution, or threats...
Chaz, by inventing a witness to Joey’s murder.
Chaz is unnerved when a mysterious phone caller seems to know every detail of that night. He concludes that only Rolvaag could know so much about it. He confronts the detective with his accusation ("Can we please cut all this ridiculous bullshit? Just tell me how much you want.") The baffled detective becomes even more suspicious of Chaz.
Stranahan also recruits his brother-in-law, a corrupt lawyer, to draft a fake will leaving Joey’s entire fortune to Chaz. Delivering this to Chaz and to the police has the double effect of playing on Chaz’s vanity and greed, and energizing the stagnating investigation.
Chaz’s judgment deteriorates further with each passing day, and he erroneously concludes that his current mistress, Ricca, a hairdresser, is the blackmailer's girlfriend and accomplice. At gunpoint, Perrone drives her out to the swamp at Loxahatchee
Loxahatchee National Wildlife Refuge
The 147,392 acre Arthur R. Marshall Loxahatchee National Wildlife Refuge includes the most northern remnant of the historic Everglades wetland ecosystem...
where, in the dark, he fires away at her. Though he only manages to wing her in the leg, Ricca plunges into the water and seemingly drowns. Unknown to Chaz, she survives and is rescued by an eccentric Vietnam
Vietnam
Vietnam – sometimes spelled Viet Nam , officially the Socialist Republic of Vietnam – is the easternmost country on the Indochina Peninsula in Southeast Asia. It is bordered by China to the north, Laos to the northwest, Cambodia to the southwest, and the South China Sea –...
veteran
Veteran
A veteran is a person who has had long service or experience in a particular occupation or field; " A veteran of ..."...
who considers the Everglades his home.
Both Stranahan and Rolvaag, working independently, trace the bill of sale of Chaz’s expensive Hummer
Hummer
Hummer was a brand of trucks and SUVs, first marketed in 1992 when AM General began selling a civilian version of the M998 Humvee. In 1998, General Motors purchased the brand name and marketed three vehicles: the original Hummer H1, based on the Humvee; and the H2 and H3 models that were...
to one of Hammernut's companies, and patient investigation leads them to discover the Everglades scam.
Rolvaag does not share his conclusions with his captain: there is no evidence directly linking the scam to Joey’s disappearance, but Rolvaag is confident that Chaz is doomed anyway. In his paranoid state, Chaz is likely to break down and confess to the scam to minimize his own punishment, while Hammernut is likely to foresee this and have Chaz eliminated. Rolvaag has even discovered hints that Joey is still alive — her credit card has been used to buy women's clothes and accessories
Fashion accessory
Fashion accessories are decorative items that supplement and complement clothes, such as jewelery, gloves, handbags, hats, belts, scarves, wigs, watches, sunglasses, pins, stockings, bow ties, hand fans, leg warmers, leggings, neckties, suspenders, and tights....
— but does not share this with Chaz.
Meanwhile, a few friends and relatives are let in on the true state of affairs and play along with Stranahan and Joey. Her brother Corbett, a reclusive sheep farmer in New Zealand
New Zealand
New Zealand is an island country in the south-western Pacific Ocean comprising two main landmasses and numerous smaller islands. The country is situated some east of Australia across the Tasman Sea, and roughly south of the Pacific island nations of New Caledonia, Fiji, and Tonga...
flies to Miami and gleefully arranges more surprises for Chaz: he hires a squadron of helicopters to buzz Chaz’s Hummer on his way to the Everglades, parodying a scene from Goodfellas
Goodfellas
Goodfellas is a 1990 American crime film directed by Martin Scorsese. It is a film adaptation of the 1986 non-fiction book Wiseguy by Nicholas Pileggi, who co-wrote the screenplay with Scorsese...
, and then arranges a memorial service for Joey at which Chaz is expected to give a speech. Chaz gets up to deliver a tear jerker eulogy, but collapses with fright when Ricca enters the church on crutches and sits next to Rolvaag in the audience.
Joey’s other accomplice is her sexy friend from her book club, Rose Jewell, who approaches Chaz after the memorial service and offers to console him over dinner at her place. Expecting an easy lay and opportunity to show off his sexual prowess, Chaz accepts the invitation, only to be drugged by Rose and put to sleep in her bed.
Only half awake, he thinks he is hallucinating
Hallucination
A hallucination, in the broadest sense of the word, is a perception in the absence of a stimulus. In a stricter sense, hallucinations are defined as perceptions in a conscious and awake state in the absence of external stimuli which have qualities of real perception, in that they are vivid,...
when he finds his presumably dead wife sitting at his side asking him reproachfully why he has tried to murder her. He confesses the truth, that he thought she had figured out his scam. She says she had no idea what he was doing, and he groggily responds, “So maybe I overreacted.”
“You really are a monster,” Joey said hoarsely.
“If you were real, I’d tell you I was sorry.”
“And I’d tell you to go straight to hell!” she said. “Why did you marry me in the first place?”
Chaz seemed truly surprised at the question. “Because you were hot. And we were so fantastic together.”
“Because I was HOT?” Joey eyed the lamp’s electrical cord, and thought: no jury in the country would convict me.
The following morning Chaz wakes up from his drug-induced slumber sitting naked at the wheel of his Hummer, which has been parked on the shoulder of a busy road during rush hour
Rush hour
A rush hour or peak hour is a part of the day during which traffic congestion on roads and crowding on public transport is at its highest. Normally, this happens twice a day—once in the morning and once in the evening, the times during when the most people commute...
. Later he receives a video
Video
Video is the technology of electronically capturing, recording, processing, storing, transmitting, and reconstructing a sequence of still images representing scenes in motion.- History :...
allegedly recorded on the night of the murder showing his crime, a film in which he clearly recognizes his wife although he can see himself only from behind. The cassette includes a message summoning him to a rendezvous to deliver the blackmail money.
The final showdown takes place at night out in the open sea during a heavy thunderstorm
Thunderstorm
A thunderstorm, also known as an electrical storm, a lightning storm, thundershower or simply a storm is a form of weather characterized by the presence of lightning and its acoustic effect on the Earth's atmosphere known as thunder. The meteorologically assigned cloud type associated with the...
. Following the blackmailer's instructions, Perrone rents a small boat with an outboard motor
Outboard motor
An outboard motor is a propulsion system for boats, consisting of a self-contained unit that includes engine, gearbox and propeller or jet drive, designed to be affixed to the outside of the transom and are the most common motorized method of propelling small watercraft...
and, together with Tool, drives to Stiltsville
Stiltsville
Stiltsville is a group of wood stilt houses located one mile south of Cape Florida on Biscayne Bay in Miami-Dade County, Florida. The structures stand on wood or reinforced concrete pilings, generally ten feet above the shallow water which varies from one to three feet deep at low...
, a former community of wooden houses built on pilings that was eradicated by Hurricane Andrew
Hurricane Andrew
Hurricane Andrew was the third Category 5 hurricane to make landfall in the United States, after the Labor Day Hurricane of 1935 and Hurricane Camille in 1969. Andrew was the first named storm and only major hurricane of the otherwise inactive 1992 Atlantic hurricane season...
. This is the spot where he is supposed to hand over a suitcase containing $500,000. Hammernut, who has provided the money, has instructed Tool to kill Perrone well before the encounter with the blackmailer and return the suitcase to him, but Tool has other plans: inspired by Maureen, he wants to abandon his life of crime, reform, and become a respectable citizen. However, before the blackmailers appear on the scene, Perrone shoots Tool, who falls into the water but, again unknown to Perrone, survives.
While Stranahan and Corbett are pulling Tool out of the water, Joey appears in the flesh and confronts her husband. Chaz is mortified — Joey is alive and on her way to the police, his scam with Red has been blown wide open, and last but not least, the will leaving Joey’s fortune to him has been a fake from the beginning. Joey is tempted to shoot him, but, following Mick’s instructions, tells him to get lost. Chaz flees in the boat.
Chaz safely arrives at the mainland with the money and immediately drives home. His new plan is to compose a suicide note
Suicide note
A suicide note or death note is a message that states the author has died by suicide, and left to be discovered and read in anticipation of suicide....
("Tonight I shall reunite with my beloved"), disappear and start a new life in Costa Rica
Costa Rica
Costa Rica , officially the Republic of Costa Rica is a multilingual, multiethnic and multicultural country in Central America, bordered by Nicaragua to the north, Panama to the southeast, the Pacific Ocean to the west and the Caribbean Sea to the east....
. But before he can leave he is snatched out of his house by Hammernut and Tool (tipped off by Ricca), hog-tied, and driven to the Everglades. Stranahan and Joey have used the blackmail money as the perfect bait — Chaz couldn’t resist the opportunity to grab it, and Hammernut concludes that the “blackmail” was just a con by Chaz to rip him off.
When Hammernut orders Tool to shoot Chaz, Tool deliberately misses and the biologist escapes into the swamp. On the way home to Hammernut's farm the entrepreneur insults Tool, who takes revenge on his boss in the middle of nowhere by slaying him and impaling his body on one of roadside crosses of the same type that Tool collects.
Joey Perrone decides to stay with Stranahan on the island. Corbett has taken an interest in Ricca, and invites her to share some time on his farm in New Zealand. Rolvaag finally closes the case and moves back to his native Minnesota
Minnesota
Minnesota is a U.S. state located in the Midwestern United States. The twelfth largest state of the U.S., it is the twenty-first most populous, with 5.3 million residents. Minnesota was carved out of the eastern half of the Minnesota Territory and admitted to the Union as the thirty-second state...
. Before he goes, Rose tells him her mother lives in Minnetonka and coquettishly invites him to lunch the next time she’s in town.
In the end, Tool is left with all the money. He decides to spend the first part of it on a vet
Veterinarian
A veterinary physician, colloquially called a vet, shortened from veterinarian or veterinary surgeon , is a professional who treats disease, disorder and injury in animals....
who removes two bullets from his body, and on a new, comfortable pickup truck
Pickup truck
A pickup truck is a light motor vehicle with an open-top rear cargo area .-Definition:...
in which he embarks on a trip to Canada
Canada
Canada is a North American country consisting of ten provinces and three territories. Located in the northern part of the continent, it extends from the Atlantic Ocean in the east to the Pacific Ocean in the west, and northward into the Arctic Ocean...
. He takes along Maureen, who he has rescued from the nursing home at her request, and who wants to see the pelican
Pelican
A pelican, derived from the Greek word πελεκυς pelekys is a large water bird with a large throat pouch, belonging to the bird family Pelecanidae....
s migrating.
In the book’s final pages, Chaz is picked up by the semi-deranged Vietnam veteran, who knows all about him through his encounter with Ricca. No description is given of Chaz’s ultimate fate, but several clues are dropped. In response to Chaz’s limp enquiry about what happens next, the veteran quotes Tennyson: “Nature, red in tooth and claw.”
Discussion
Hiaasen's novels are often classified as "Crime Fiction" (or "environmental thrillers"), but they can also be read as satiricalSatire
Satire is primarily a literary genre or form, although in practice it can also be found in the graphic and performing arts. In satire, vices, follies, abuses, and shortcomings are held up to ridicule, ideally with the intent of shaming individuals, and society itself, into improvement...
and comic mainstream
Mainstream
Mainstream is, generally, the common current thought of the majority. However, the mainstream is far from cohesive; rather the concept is often considered a cultural construct....
novels depicting people in difficult and outrageous situations triggered by human weaknesses such as greed, lust
Lust
Lust is an emotional force that is directly associated with the thinking or fantasizing about one's desire, usually in a sexual way.-Etymology:The word lust is phonetically similar to the ancient Roman lustrum, which literally meant "purification"...
, ignorance
Ignorance
Ignorance is a state of being uninformed . The word ignorant is an adjective describing a person in the state of being unaware and is often used as an insult...
, or revenge.
Plot
In his review of Strip Tease, Donald E. WestlakeDonald E. Westlake
Donald Edwin Westlake was an American writer, with over a hundred novels and non-fiction books to his credit. He specialized in crime fiction, especially comic capers, with an occasional foray into science fiction or other genres...
commented that, at the center of all the wackiness was an accessible, touching storyline: a single mother’s quest to rescue her young daughter from a reckless husband and an inadequate foster care system. Skinny Dip has at its center a wife who survives a murder attempt by her husband, and is driven not just by the need to get even, but to find out the reason he did it. This gives the novel more focus than some of Hiaasen’s other books, which often involve the characters running across each other in random ways, or going on unplanned wanderings across Florida.
The other central plot is the fight to save the Everglades, and the role that the villains are playing in its destruction. Somewhere along the way, the two plot lines converge, and the quest to take revenge on Chaz becomes tied up with the aim of stopping Red’s pollution.
In other words, the reader is offered a choice of which thing to root for: some readers may think that Chaz’s betrayal of the environment for money makes him detestable, but trying to murder his wife is what makes him a true monster; other readers may think the exact opposite.
Skinny Dip is also enriched by a variety of subplots: Tool's gradual moral awakening, as he grows closer to a dying old lady who is too proud to admit that she has been abandoned by her family; Karl Rolvaag's longing for his native Minnesota, and his search for his escaped pet pythons; Chaz’s obsession with sex and his desperate attempts to reverse the erectile dysfunction
Erectile dysfunction
Erectile dysfunction is sexual dysfunction characterized by the inability to develop or maintain an erection of the penis during sexual performance....
which is his only sign of guilt over Joey’s murder, including experimenting with a black-market version of Viagra — "the Food and Drug Administration
Food and Drug Administration
The Food and Drug Administration is an agency of the United States Department of Health and Human Services, one of the United States federal executive departments...
(FDA) definitely would not approve."; and finally, the suitcase full of money, which changes hands until it falls into the grip of the least likely person in the story.
The novel contains many scenes reminiscent of classic farce
Farce
In theatre, a farce is a comedy which aims at entertaining the audience by means of unlikely, extravagant, and improbable situations, disguise and mistaken identity, verbal humour of varying degrees of sophistication, which may include word play, and a fast-paced plot whose speed usually increases,...
s. For instance, at one point there are five people in the Perrone house, three of whom are trying to hide their presence from the other: at the center is Chaz and his “back-up” girlfriend Medea, with whom he has just unsuccessfully attempted sexual relations; hiding under the bed is Joey, caught in the middle of another infiltration of the house; Tool is in another part of the house, ordered to protect Perrone but ordered by him to stay out of the way of his date; and finally Mick, who enters in search of Joey and, when he encounters Tool, politely asks him if he’s going to try and stop Mick. (“What a dumb-ass question. Of course I am.”)
In a similar situation, Chaz, expecting sex with Rose, is drunk and drugged and lured into bed, not knowing that the woman he’s groping for is in fact his wife.
Other funny situations arise out of Chaz’s paranoia and ineptness as a killer. He imagines he’s surrounded by enemies, but he always manages to look in the wrong direction. Even when the truth — for example, Joey — is right in front of him, he attributes it to hallucinations caused by the West Nile virus
West Nile virus
West Nile virus is a virus of the family Flaviviridae. Part of the Japanese encephalitis antigenic complex of viruses, it is found in both tropical and temperate regions. It mainly infects birds, but is known to infect humans, horses, dogs, cats, bats, chipmunks, skunks, squirrels, domestic...
, rather than recognizing it for a sophisticated hoax.
Characters
The characters in ‘’Skinny Dip’’ follow many of the archetypes followed by Hiaasen in his previous novels: there is usually a smart, level-headed female who also happens to be very attractive (Joey), complemented by a capable, strong male with an unorthodox streak (Mick). There is also usually a character with some kind of bizarre deformity or disability (Tool).As usual, Hiaasen divides the characters into those who like nature, and those who don’t. The ones who like it the most have often been beaten around by society, and choose to make the great outdoors their permanent home. Mick, after years as a cop in the city, likes nothing better than fishing off his island. On the other hand, the lone Vietnam veteran has seemingly lost the fight against his adversaries, and run away. However, we are pointed to the fact that, unlike the villains, he lives a sustainable
Sustainability
Sustainability is the capacity to endure. For humans, sustainability is the long-term maintenance of well being, which has environmental, economic, and social dimensions, and encompasses the concept of union, an interdependent relationship and mutual responsible position with all living and non...
life absolutely in tune with nature, without depleting any natural resources or polluting the environment.
The villains, of course, only think of nature as an obstacle or a resource to be exploited. They are often portrayed as so steeped in corruption and greed that they think of themselves as heroes, or at least as normal guys, through an “everybody does it” rationalization. Red Hammernut is a corporate fat cat who inherited the building blocks of his fortune from his father and reaps his profits through the overindulgence of the state; yet he thinks only of all the “work” he has to do — handing out campaign donations, overseeing his labor force of indentured migrants, lobbying around or avoiding pollution laws — and sees himself as a hard-working “American farmer.”
This was no easy gig. Red Hammernut got infuriated every time he heard some pissy liberal refer to the federal farm bill as ‘corporate welfare.’ The term implied contented idleness, and nobody worked harder than Red to keep the money flowing and to stay out of trouble.
Likewise, Chaz sees absolutely nothing wrong with his role in helping Hammernut continue to pollute the Everglades:
Blaming the demise of the Everglades on science whores such as himself seemed as silly to Chaz as blaming lung cancerLung cancerLung cancer is a disease characterized by uncontrolled cell growth in tissues of the lung. If left untreated, this growth can spread beyond the lung in a process called metastasis into nearby tissue and, eventually, into other parts of the body. Most cancers that start in lung, known as primary...
on the medical doctors employed by tobacco companies, who for generations had insisted that cigarettes were harmless. The truth was that people were determined to smoke, regardless of what any pinhead researchers had to say. Likewise, cities and farms were bound to dispose of their liquefied crap in the cheapest, most efficient way: flushing it into public waters.
You can’t buck human nature, Chaz reasoned, so you might as well go with the flow, so to speak.
Chaz Perrone is one of Hiaasen’s funniest villains. The novel's jacket introduces him as "[maybe] the only marine biologist who doesn't know which way the Gulf Stream
Gulf Stream
The Gulf Stream, together with its northern extension towards Europe, the North Atlantic Drift, is a powerful, warm, and swift Atlantic ocean current that originates at the tip of Florida, and follows the eastern coastlines of the United States and Newfoundland before crossing the Atlantic Ocean...
runs" and this is the key to his character. Like all Hiaasen bad guys, he is lazy, amoral, greedy, illiterate, and averse to nature, but unlike the others his particular corruption forces him to pose in a role for which he is spectacularly unsuited.
As a "scientist" for the water management district, his standard kit for collecting water samples includes his Hummer
Hummer H2
The Hummer H2 is an SUV and SUT that was marketed by General Motors under the Hummer brand. It is a large truck , while longer, heavier , and taller with room for six passengers , seven passengers in some models. The rearmost part of the H2 SUV was modified to a pickup truck bed for the 2005 H2 SUT...
(bright yellow, “to freak out any panthers that might be lurking,” despite the fact that Florida panther
Florida Panther
The Florida panther is an endangered subspecies of cougar that lives in forests and swamps of southern Florida in the United States. Its current taxonomic status is unresolved, but recent genetic research alone does not alter the legal conservation status...
s are both colorblind and nearly extinct), and a golf club, which he swings wildly around him to scare away any nearby fish, birds, or reptiles before he’ll set foot in the water. (“He would have carried a high-caliber rifle, except it was strictly forbidden[.]”)
What makes Chaz so funny is that he’s too vain to realize what an obvious fake he is, and thus his attempts to appear sophisticated, suave, or innocent only dig him in deeper: on the strength of his PhD he arrogantly insists on being addressed as “Dr. Perrone” then immediately has to explain that he’s not an M.D. (especially to Tool, who keeps bugging him for prescription drugs). His flippant error about the direction of the Gulf Stream is made to Detective Rolvaag, and reveals a gap in his credentials as a scientist; in subsequent conversations with the detective, Chaz jokes about running over snakes on the highway, tells Rolvaag to throw his soda can in the trash, and can’t even identify the fish in his own aquarium — “Do I look like frigging Jacques Cousteau?”
What’s funniest is his “fabulous inefficiency” as a killer. At his first attempt, he tosses his wife overboard at sea, forgetting that she’s a champion swimmer; at his second, he is so inexperienced with guns that he can’t hit Ricca with a pistol shot from thirty feet away; at his third, he shoots Tool at point blank range, yet only manages to wound him in the armpit. Each of these three persons survives, and resurfaces to take part in the revenge plot against him.
Yet it should not be missed that, psychologically at least, Chaz is perfectly capable of murder. He’s so egocentric that he’s incapable of real feeling for anyone, whether it’s his wife, his mistress, or his own mother. Chaz has no attachment to Joey except as a sex object (though that attachment is strong enough to cripple his libido after she’s gone). Not only does he toss her overboard at sea, afterwards he blandly gathers all her belongings and clothes and dumps them in the garbage — as Joey tearfully says, “sweeping me out the door like I was dirt.”
Joey is everything Chaz isn’t: smart, classy, observant, sensitive, and subtle — once she finally admits to herself how worthless her husband is, she knows exactly where to probe his weaknesses and send him into a psychological corkscrew.
Another persistent theme of Hiaasen’s books is that his villains share bad qualities that lead them down self-destructive paths. First, there’s Chaz’s paranoia, which is so intense that he decides to murder Joey because he (incorrectly) assumes she has figured out his scam, thereby setting in motion the whole chain of events that leads to his destruction. Second, there’s his greed: when the chance to escape with the blackmail money is offered, he grabs at it, exposing himself to Hammernut’s revenge. Third, there’s his arrogance and vanity, which makes him totally incapable of stopping and analyzing what he’s doing wrong, and thus stopping suspicion from piling on in Rolvaag’s mind.
Accuracy of Environmental Reporting
In his review of Skinny Dip for The New RepublicThe New Republic
The magazine has also published two articles concerning income inequality, largely criticizing conservative economists for their attempts to deny the existence or negative effect increasing income inequality is having on the United States...
, Washington Post reporter Michael Grunwald criticized the book as being too-fictionalized, and potentially misleading, in describing the causes of the Everglades’ ecological status. In Hiaasen’s scenario, the Everglades are dying as a result of agricultural contaminants dumped by greedy corporate villains, aided and abetted by corrupt or complacent officials.
Grunwald maintains that the state effort to curtail agricultural pollution is separate from the Everglades Restoration Project, and had been largely successful even before the Project commenced in 2000. Instead, the biggest threat to the Everglades comes not from corporate pollution or corrupt officials, but rather from "John Q. Public" — the diversion of freshwater for South Florida’s huge municipalities, and the normal waste products associated with such cities. Grunwald says that when conservation efforts should focus on curtailing the effects of public activity, it is misleading and dangerous to lay all the blame on "bad guys" personified by Red Hammernut and Chaz.
On the other hand, Grunwald agrees that it is "smart to be cynical" about Florida politics, "especially all the daily blathering about conserving our precious natural resources." A recurring theme in Grunwald’s book, The Swamp, is that for the majority of Florida’s history, the Everglades has been viewed as a hostile territory, a nuisance, or an obstacle to growth, and only very recently has perception changed to regard it as a place worth saving.
Hiaasen is also scathing about this in the chapter when he briefly summarizes the history of the Everglades, and how ninety percent of it has been destroyed through the course of South Florida’s development:
Inevitably, the Everglades and all its resplendent wildlife began to die, but no one with the power to prevent it even considered trying. It was, after all, just a huge damn swamp.
But later, it became clear that the Everglades’ health was linked to South Florida’s drinking water, and if the Everglades died, then growth would stop dead:
This apocalyptic scenario was laid out before Florida’s politicians, and in no time at all even the most slatternly among them was extolling the Everglades as a national treasure, that must be preserved at all costs.
Continuity
- Mick Stranahan is the protagonist of Hiaasen's third novel Skin TightSkin Tight (novel)Skin Tight is a novel by Carl Hiaasen. It focuses on a former detective for the Florida State Attorney's office, who becomes the target of a murder plot by a corrupt, and egregiously incompetent, plastic surgeon.-Plot summary:...
. - Other characters from Skin Tight also make brief appearances, including Mick’s brother-in-law, crooked lawyer Kipper Garth, and Marine Patrol Officer Luis Cordova.
- Skinny Dip makes an oblique reference to Christina Marks, the female protagonist of Skin Tight, in confirming that Christina married Mick, and later divorced him.
- The hermit who rescues Ricca is "Skink" aka Clinton TyreeClinton TyreeClinton Tyree, a.k.a. Skink, is a fictional character who has appeared in several novels by Carl Hiaasen, beginning with Double Whammy in 1987. He is an opponent of sprawl and development, and partakes of roadkill cuisine.-Personal history:...
a recurring character in Hiaasen's novels. The unnamed "intense young man" accompanying him is most likely Twilly Spree, the protagonist of Sick PuppySick PuppySick Puppy is a novel by Carl Hiaasen.-Plot summary:Florida's corrupt governor, Dick Artemus, pursues schemes to line his pockets and those of his rich entrepreneur backers at the expense of the environment. His schemes have always foundered in the past, but he has high hopes of a plan involving...
. - In Hiaasen’s book, Stormy WeatherStormy Weather (novel)Stormy Weather is a 1995 novel by Carl Hiaasen. It takes place in the chaotic aftermath of Hurricane Andrew in South Florida, including insurance scams, street fights, hunt for food and shelter, corrupt bureaucracy, ravaged environment and disaster tourists....
Skink takes another character to a stilt house in Biscayne Bay, saying that it used to be occupied by a former Investigator for the State Attorney’s Office, who had "recently married a beautiful twelve-string guitarist and moved to the Island of ExumaExumaExuma is a district of the Bahamas, consisting of over 360 islands . The largest of the cays is Great Exuma, which is 37 mi in length and joined to another island, Little Exuma by a small bridge. The capital and largest city in the district is George Town , founded 1793 and located on Great...
." Assuming this is a reference to Mick, this is a slight discontinuity with Skinny Dip, in which he lists his number of ex-wives as six: the five mentioned in Skin Tight, plus Christina. - Hiaasen's novels often feature a recurring joke that radiologyRadiologyRadiology is a medical specialty that employs the use of imaging to both diagnose and treat disease visualized within the human body. Radiologists use an array of imaging technologies to diagnose or treat diseases...
is a "soft" medical discipline, and those that practice it are not "real" doctors. In this novel, Chaz's backstory explains that his original ambition was to go to medical school and become a radiologist, which struck him as an appealing way to become wealthy without "interacting with actual sick people," and leave him plenty of leisure time to maintain his sex life.
Adaptation
- On July 5, 2011, the Hollywood Reporter announced that HBO Networks was developing Skinny Dip for a film or miniseries.
See also
- Draining and development of the EvergladesDraining and development of the EvergladesThe history of draining and development of the Everglades dates back to the 19th century. During the Second Seminole War beginning in 1836, the United States military's mission was to seek out Seminole people in the Everglades and capture or kill them. Those missions gave the military the...
- Restoration of the EvergladesRestoration of the EvergladesThe restoration of the Everglades is an ongoing effort to remedy damage inflicted on the environment of southern Florida during the 20th century. It is the most expensive and comprehensive environmental repair attempt in history. The degradation of the Everglades became an issue in the United...
External links
- Review by Michael Grunwald
- Review by Tom Knapp
- Review by Marilyn Stasio NY Times July 11, 2004
- http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/hbo-developing-carl-hiaasens-skinny-208109 Hollywood Reporter, retrieved July 25, 2011.