Lifelong Florida resident Carl Hiassen has carved himself a unique niche in the 45-odd years he’s been writing novels. Set firmly in his home state, his novels typically feature a wild cast of environmental activists, law personnel, corrupt politicians and offbeat characters. Central to the novels are the steady eroding of natural habitat and crazy politics. They are hilarious, savage, and satirical, and someone who did not read the papers might consider them farfetched.
Hiassen is perhaps one of the few writers who can cope with the crazy unreality of the Trump era. As he said in an interview:
You think up a scene or a character or a plotline that you think is so far out there. And then you pick up the newspaper […] and you see there’s a guy in the White House who’s suggesting it’s a great idea to inject Clorox into your veins to cure Covid-19.
Interview with WBUR radio
Squeeze Me features a strong female protagonist: Angela Armstrong, a wildlife-disposal specialist who runs a solo operation called Discreet Captures. Raccoons, squirrels, opossums, snakes and other wildlife routinely enter the subdivisions and golf courses in Florida, due to the relentless destruction of their native habitat, and Angie is the person called to deal with the problem. (For the animal-lovers, she generally captures and releases them elsewhere). She occasionally seems like a bit of a male fantasy — pretty but tough, looks great in safari khakis as well as a ballgown, and handles rejection and sex with a cheerful lack of emotion — but still, this is satire, and she is a fun companion through the wild journey.
A python has appeared at a fancy estate in Palm Beach during an upscale charity gala. And not just any python, this is a Burmese python, which can reach a length of 20 feet.
Popular among amateur collectors, the snakes were imported to the United States legally from Southeast Asia for decades. But because a hungry baby python can grow into an eight-foot eating machine within a year, owners often found themselves having second thoughts. Consequently, scores of the pet snakes were set free. Only in southern Florida did the species take hold, the hot climate and abundance of prey being ideal for python reproduction.
This python appears to have eaten recently, based on the bulge in its stomach. Coincidentally? a tiny, elderly, wealthy socialite called Kiki Pew Fitzsimmons, drunk and high on ecstasy, goes missing the same night.
Once the connection between Kiki’s disappearance and the python is independently made by several people, the action speeds up. No club wants it known that their elderly rich clients might risk consumption by python during their visits. The python’s body, still with its bulge, is stolen from Angie’s freezer by two incompetent thieves, who manage to let it fly out of their car trunk on a major roadway just before the First Lady’s motorcade arrives.
FLOTUS, it turns out, is on her way to ‘Casa Bellicosa’, the ‘Winter White House’. Her Secret Service code name is Mockingbird.
The President’s Secret Service code name was ‘Mastodon’. He loved it.
“Perfect!” he’d boomed when he was told. “Fearless, smart and tough.”
“And enormous“, she said to herself. […]
On only his second day in the White House, the President had ordered his chief of staff to arrange a trip to the White House for a close-up look at a real mastodon. The chief of staff wasn’t brave enough to tell the President the truth, so he cooked up a story that the zoo’s beloved mastodon herd was on loan to a wildlife park in Christchurch, New Zealand. The President had scowled, muttered something about ‘those snotty Kiwis’, and soon gotten sidetrack by another daft notion.
The night of the python, a group of illegal immigrants arrived at a Florida beach, and one of them was unlucky enough to pick up a pink stone. When they are captured by immigration, the stone is identified as a rare conch pearl from the missing socialite’s necklace, and Diego Beltran is charged with murder.
Diego was confident he’d be freed from jail the next morning and taken back to the immigration detention center, where he would join the others and resume work on his asylum application.
In a place like South Florida, such heart-bound faith in the justice system could best be described as quaint.
Kiki is a dedicated member of the “POTUS Pussies’, a ‘group of Palm Bech women who proclaimed brassy loyalty to the new, crude-spoken commander-in-chief’. Mastodon is informed that Diego has been arrested. At a press conference, he lets loose with his usual brand of chaos
The President cocked his head, flared his nostrils, puffed his scrotal cheeks and declared:
“Unfortunately, the tragic death of Mrs. Fitzsimmons appears to be much more sinister than just the usual kidnapping and robbery. I’ve received some very disturbing information about Señor Diego, a very malo hombre who I’m told is from Honduras, a country infested with violent street gangs. […] Let’s call it an extremely high probability that the brutal murder of Kikey Pew Fitzsimmons was an act of political terrorism aimed at me and my administration. “
There’s pressure from the White House to keep Diego in jail, there are crowds outside chanting murderous death threats, and Diego is attacked by white supremacists in jail.
Meanwhile, Angie is working with the Palm Beach police chief Jerry Crosby and Secret Service agent Paul Ryskamp to get the real story out and free Diego, against all odds. And POTUS is having an affair with a stripper, and FLOTUS with her assigned Secret Service agent, and it is the job of the beleagured Secret Service to ensure that their assignations are kept from the press.
In this scarily dangerous political period, Hiassen is the rare writer with current political commentary that I can bear to read. He always gives us a rollicking, eco-conscious jaunt, but he might have outdone himself with Squeeze Me.
(The novel is dedicated to Hiassen’s brother Rob, a journalist who was killed in the 2018 shooting at the Capital Gazette newspaper in Annapolis)
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