What I’m Reading… ‘Star Island’ by Carl Hiaasen

To begin, some clarifications:

1. The title for this post is wrong.  I will not actually be reading the book on which I am posting; I will have just finished it.  ‘What I’m reading’ sounds catchier than the more accurate ‘What I’ve just read’ and far less pretentious than ‘Book Review’. So, for now, I am sticking with it.
2. I generally do not buy hardcovers.  If you are expecting random thoughts about just published books, you are at the wrong blog.  What you will get are random thoughts and observations on whatever book I have just finished and about which I have decided to blog.

So on to ‘Star Island’.

Originally published in 2010, and recently issued in paperback, ‘Star Island’ is Hiaasen’s 12^th and most recent novel about Florida.  How can one tell this is a Hiaasen novel:

• it quite funnily rails against the rape of Florida by unscrupulous real estate developers and politicians, ‘greedy suckworms disguised as upright citizens’;
• one of the main characters is a young, strong, intelligent woman, probably to counter-balance the ditzes, bimboes and other random products of plastic surgery peppered throughout the novel;
• it features an ex-con with a physical quirk.  OK, in this case, a myriad of physical quirks;
• Skink; and
• Carl Hiaasen’s name is in big red letters on the front cover.

So ‘Star Island’ is fairly standard Hiaasen fare.  If you’re a fan, then you’ll be pleased.  If you’re new to Hiaasen, it will give you a taste of what his writing is all about.  Essentially, using a mixture of quirky sense of humour and an almost casual approach to near-cartoonish violence, the novel follows the usual formula.  Characters act with a near-pathological self-interest in seeking out and benefitting from, any and all deals, scams, projects or schemes, whether legal or not, with no regards to the immediate or long-term consequences.  It definitively is a formula, one which has started to feel a bit stale in recent Hiaasen’s recent novels.

That being said, there are two definite plusses to ‘Star Island’:

• The main story revolves around the music industry.  By my recollection, not since creating the seminal punk band Jimmy and the Slut Puppies in ‘Sick Puppy’ has Hiaasen written about the industry and excoriated its managers, publicists, star-makers and star-fuckers.
• Some of the characters seem to have more depth than in previous novels.  Chemo, the afore-mentioned ex-con, and even, on some level, Bang Abbott, the paparazzo at the middle of the main story, while acting with an oft-times unhealthy measure of self-interest, have some moral or behavioural lines which they will not cross.  Hopefully, this is a sign that there is some room to freshen up the Hiaasen formula.

All in all, while I started off a bit apprehensive about whether ‘Star Island’ may feel like it was Hiaasen going through the motions, ‘Star Island’ turned out to be worth a read.