Synopsis
A story of suspense written serially by thirteen of Florida's most talented writers--including Dave Barry, Carl Hiaasen, and Elmore Leonard--features a riot in Coconut Grove, an appearance by Fidel Castro, and other strange happenings
Reviews
Thirteen top Florida writers team up, one chapter each, for this formula crime farce. Booger, a manatee ``whose brain was approximately the size and complexity of a bocce ball,'' sets the Rube Goldberg plot in motion when, at the behest of Dave Barry, he collides with a boat commandeered by a pair of equally witless thieves, sending them into the drink and their mysterious cargo--which looks an awful lot like Fidel Castro's head--into the lap of Les Standiford's contractor John Deal and his lawyer, Paul Levine's Jake Lassiter, who'll phone Edna Buchanan's peerless crime reporter Britt Montero and--well, you get the idea. Can a baker's dozen of different cooks (including James W. Hall, Carolina Hospital, Evelyn Mayerson, Tananrive Due, Brian Antoni, Vicki Hendricks, John Dufresne, and Elmore Leonard) keep this souffl‚ aloft? Absolutely, since the collective mythology of greater Miami-- which stipulates battling environmentalists, rabid right-wing Cuba libres, vacant-eyed movie stars, TV news anchors, and visiting politicos--has become so deeply ingrained that it makes for a virtually seamless, albeit knockabout, plot. But if they can do it, can they do it well? Amazingly, the writing is mostly as neutral in tone as it is seamless; except for Dufresne's waggish parodies (his Jimmy Carter dreams of a Sonnet Sequence for Democracy that will be lapped up by ``schoolchildren, illiterates, babies, cats''), there's little sense of any individual style until the final mop-up chapters by Leonard and Hiaasen, which make you realize that the whole yarn smacks of a typically outlandish Hiaasen outline fleshed out by a dozen drinking buddies--and make you wish Hiaasen had taken on the job himself. Despite the steamy title, with its promise of sea-cow sex, the whole good-natured outing is less reminiscent of Naked Came the Stranger than of those Detection Club productions from the 1930s--The Floating Admiral, Ask a Policeman, and so on. So much for life, and art, on the cutting edge. (First printing of 100,000) -- Copyright ©1996, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.
Aside from Hiaasen, this collective effort is authored by a host of South Florida writers?Dave Barry, Les Standiford, Paul Levine, Edna Buchanan, James W. Hall, Carolina Hospital, Evelyn Mayerson, Tananarive Due, Brian Antoni, Vicki Hendricks, John Dufresne, and Elmore Leonard?who joined forces a year ago to write a 13-week serial in the "Tropic" section of the Miami Herald. In Miami, John Deal, Britt Montero, and Jake Lassitor (stock characters of Standiford, Buchanan, and Levine, respectively) join forces to help a 102-year-old environmentalist and her granddaughter investigate a mysterious, hermetically sealed head-sized canister brought up from the depths by Booger, a saintly manatee who roams the coves off Coconut Grove and seems to have a calling to save imperiled creatures. Each chapter of this comic thriller is a gem that builds on the preceding one. Highlights include a parody of Moby Dick ("Call Me Booger...") and a guest appearance by Jimmy Carter in Dufresne's chapter. Many of these writers have a built-in readership, and all proceeds go to charity. Highly recommended.
-?Laurel Wilson, Alexandrian P.L., Mount Vernon, Ind.
Copyright 1997 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Dave Barry, Elmore Leonard, Brian Antoni, and nine other South Florida writers joined Hiaasen to author this quirky, engaging novel. The concept was borrowed from the 1969 Naked Came the Stranger by Penelope Ashe, a pseudonym representing a collaboration of 20 journalists who fooled the nation with their trashy sex novel, which, even after the hoax was revealed, sold phenomenally. Like the childhood game in which one person writes the first sentence of a story and the next person writes the next sentence and so on until "And they lived happily ever after," this novel is a series of chapters by different authors. Booger is a manatee inhabiting Biscayne Bay; his best friend is the 102-year-old Marion, who uses Booger to help her protect the bay from harm. In chapter one, Booger witnesses some disturbing business in his waters, which begins a chain of events involving Castro imposters, Cuban hoodlums, murders, and longtime love affairs. The reader will enjoy each author's distinctive style; Hiaasen's and John Dufresne's contributions are particularly enchanting. Expect demand. Mary Frances Wilkens
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