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Squeeze Me

 

It’s been four long years since Razor Girl, Carl Hiaasen’s last adult novel, but with passages like this early on – ‘The lead burglar’s name was Uric. His helper was a dull-eyed f**kwit who worked cheap, basically for cigarettes’ – you know the master of the acerbic wit is back and in fine form. And for once his unflinching eye isn’t focussed on the unscrupulous developers who are destroying America’s last great natural wonder, the Everglades, it’s the occupant of the ‘Winter White House’ and his geriatric cheerleaders, the POTUSSIES, one of whom has just been eaten by an eighteen-foot-long Burmese python. Because someone, and if you’re a fan of Hiaasen you can probably guess who, has been setting this deadly, invasive apex predator in and amongst the pampered neo-conservatives of Palm Beach. Enter Angie Armstrong, felon (she did time for feeding a poacher’s hand to an alligator) and wildlife wrangler. She knows something’s up, but it’s an inconvenient truth compared with the story the President is promoting – Kiki Pew Fitzsimmons wasn’t eaten by a snake, she was killed by rampaging hordes of illegal immigrants.

Cue inept burglars, secret service agents, one-handed psychotics, one-eyed ex-governors and a whole swarm of unforgettable characters. Because as clever and as relevant and as bitingly satirical as the plot is, it’s his characters we keep coming back for. With the possible exception of Elmore Leonard, no one can match Carl Hiaasen’s skill in creating hysterically funny lowlifes, redneck whackjobs, sketchy businessmen, morally compromised suburbanites and eccentric protagonists. Squeeze Me was my most anticipated book of 2020 and it exceeded even my wildest expectations. Thought-provoking, incredibly paced and so very, very funny, it’s easily the best book I’ve read this year.

M.W. Craven