Skinny Dip by Carl Hiaasen

This is one from my TBR pile.  My sister gave it to me over a year ago and assured me that it was hilarious and that I would really enjoy it.  For some reason, I was dubious.  Despite the cleverly written back cover, I was sort of put off by the title.  So I just kept passing it by when it came time to grab my next book.

But a few weeks ago, some friends and I took a bus ride up to Philly to support the USA soccer team in their friendly match against Turkey before heading to the World Cup in South Africa.  It's a 3-hour drive each way, and I went prowling for a the perfect book to take with me.  Skinny Dip won the prize.

I got a good feeling when one of hte other bus patrons passed me and said, "Oh, that's a great book.  You'll love it."

This is a snippet from Amazon's review: 

Charles "Chaz" Perrone fancies himself a take-charge kind of guy. So when this "biologist by default" suspects that his curvaceous wife, Joey, has stumbled onto a profitable pollution scam he's running on behalf of Florida agribusiness mogul Red Hammernut, he sets out right away to solve the problem--by heaving Joey off the deck of a luxury cruise liner and into the Atlantic Ocean, far from Key West. But--whoops!--Joey, a former swimming champ, doesn't drown. Instead, as Carl Hiaasen tells in his 10th adult novel, Skinny Dip, she makes her way back to shore, thanks both to a wayward bale of Jamaican marijuana and lonerish ex-cop Mick Stranahan, and then launches a bogus blackmail campaign that's guaranteed to drive her lazy, libidinous hubby into a self-protective frenzy.

It's ridiculous.  It's over the top.  It's funny... Have you seen the Sprite commercial that focuses on a group of writers sitting outside a Hollywood studio?  They're all just tapping their pencils and looking lost.  But then a pirate ship, a panda, a cheerleader, and a martial arts fight all start falling out of the stratosphere, and when the main character takes a drink of sprite they all 'splash' into his imagination and you hear him say, "Ok, I got it.  We'll start with a cheerleader..." 

That's how I imagine Carl Hiaasen came up with some of this characters and plot devices.  They're just that ridiculous.  (For example:  A woman made independently wealthy because her parents died in a plane crash while transporting their juggling circus bear home from the specialist who needed to treat the bear's impacted tooth.)  But you forgive him.  Because it's just so entertaining.

So thank you Amanda.  I should have trusted you.