Books by Carl Hiaasen
Born: 1953Carl Hiaasen Biography & Notes
Carl Hiaasen [pronounced "hiya-sun"] (born March 12, 1953) is an American journalist and novelist.
Born and raised in Plantation, Florida (near Fort Lauderdale), Carl was the first of four chldren and the son of a lawyer, Odel. He married Connie Lyford just after high-school graduation and entered Emory University in 1970. In 1972 he transferred to the University of Florida, graduating in 1974 with a degree in journalism.
After two years as a reporter for Cocoa Today out of Cocoa, Florida, he joined the Miami Herald in 1976, where he still (as of 2004) works. From 1979 he turned to investigative journalism, concentrating on construction and property development - exposing schemes to destroy, for profit's sake, Florida's natural beauty. From 1985 he has had a column in the Herald, intially thrice-weekly it now appears once a week.
Eventually, in the 1980s, he embarked on a career as a novelist. He co-wrote three thrillers with fellow-journalist Bill Montalbano (
Powder Burn (1981),
Trap Line (1981),
A Death in China (1986)). After Montalbano became a foreign correspondent, Hiaasen wrote his first book,
Tourist Season (1986) - introducing many of his distinctive styles and themes.
Hiaasen's fiction mirrors his concerns as a journalist and Floridian. His novels have been classified as "environmental thrillers" and are usually found on the crime shelves in bookshops, although they can just as well be read as mainstream satires of contemporary life.
Hiaasen's Florida is that of greedy businessmen, corrupt politicians, dumb blondes, apathetic retirees, intellectually challenged tourists, and militant ecoteurs. It is the same Florida of John D. MacDonald and Travis McGee, but aged another 20 years and viewed with a more satiric or sardonic eye.
Hiaasen divorced Connie in 1996 and remarried in 1999 to Fenia Clizer, a restaurant manager, he has one son from his first marriage and another from his second. He lives in the Florida Keys.
Born and raised in Plantation, Florida (near Fort Lauderdale), Carl was the first of four chldren and the son of a lawyer, Odel. He married Connie Lyford just after high-school graduation and entered Emory University in 1970. In 1972 he transferred to the University of Florida, graduating in 1974 with a degree in journalism.
After two years as a reporter for Cocoa Today out of Cocoa, Florida, he joined the Miami Herald in 1976, where he still (as of 2004) works. From 1979 he turned to investigative journalism, concentrating on construction and property development - exposing schemes to destroy, for profit's sake, Florida's natural beauty. From 1985 he has had a column in the Herald, intially thrice-weekly it now appears once a week.
Eventually, in the 1980s, he embarked on a career as a novelist. He co-wrote three thrillers with fellow-journalist Bill Montalbano (
Powder Burn (1981),
Trap Line (1981),
A Death in China (1986)). After Montalbano became a foreign correspondent, Hiaasen wrote his first book,
Tourist Season (1986) - introducing many of his distinctive styles and themes.
Hiaasen's fiction mirrors his concerns as a journalist and Floridian. His novels have been classified as "environmental thrillers" and are usually found on the crime shelves in bookshops, although they can just as well be read as mainstream satires of contemporary life.
Hiaasen's Florida is that of greedy businessmen, corrupt politicians, dumb blondes, apathetic retirees, intellectually challenged tourists, and militant ecoteurs. It is the same Florida of John D. MacDonald and Travis McGee, but aged another 20 years and viewed with a more satiric or sardonic eye.
Hiaasen divorced Connie in 1996 and remarried in 1999 to Fenia Clizer, a restaurant manager, he has one son from his first marriage and another from his second. He lives in the Florida Keys.
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Basket Case by Carl Hiaasen ( 2003)
Former investigative reporter Jack Tagger gets his chance to escape the doldrums of obituary writing as he investigates the supicious "accidental" death of rock star Jimmy Stoma, the infamous leader of Jimmy and the Slut Puppies, if he can escape his ambitious young editor, the star's widow, a brutish bodyguard, and the profit-hungry owner of his newpaper. Reprint.
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Cracker Florida's Enduring Cowboys by Jon Kral ( 1999)
A photographic examination of the world of Florida cowboys.
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A Death in China by Carl Hiaasen, William Montalbano ( 1985)
Tom Stratton, a visiting professor of art from the United States, learns that David Wang, the fellow professor he was to have met, has died under mysterious circumstances.
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A Death in China by Carl Hiaasen, William D. Montalbano ( 1998)
An American investigating his mentors murder finds himself ensnared in a web of lies and treachery in China, where even tomorrow's weather is a state secret. From a nightmarish interrogation to assassination by cobra, A Death in China takes readers on a trip with no rest stops through a world of claustrophobic mistrust and terrifying danger.
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Double Whammy by Carl Hiaasen ( 1989)
R.J. Decker, trailer park resident and neophyte private eye, teams up with a half-blind, half-mad hermit--and faces down television evangelists, dangerous women, pistol-packing rednecks, and a pit bull--to solve a fishy murder.
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The Downhill Lie A Hacker's Return to a Ruinous Sport by Carl Hiaasen ( 2008)
A hilarious golf memoir recounts the author's return to the fairways after quitting the game in college and waiting more than thirty years and into middle age before returning to the sport, describing how he purchased a set of clubs, joined a country club, practiced for eighteen long months, and agreed to compete in a tournament against much more talented players. (Sports & Recreation)
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The Downhill Lie A Hacker's Return to a Ruinous Sport by Carl Hiaasen ( 2008)
A hilarious golf memoir recounts the author's return to the fairways after quitting the game in college and waiting more than thirty years and into middle age before returning to the sport, describing how he purchased a set of clubs, joined a country club, practiced for eighteen long months, and agreed to compete in a tournament against much more talented players. Simultaneous.
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The Downhill Lie A Hacker's Return to a Ruinous Sport by Carl Hiaasen ( 2008)
A hilarious golf memoir recounts the author's return to the fairways after quitting the game in college and waiting more than thirty years and into middle age before returning to the sport, describing how he purchased a set of clubs, joined a country club, practiced for eighteen long months, and agreed to compete in a tournament against much more talented players. 200,000 first printing.
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Flush by Carl Hiaasen ( 2005)
You know it’s going to be a rough summer when you spend Father’s Day visiting your dad in the local lockup.
Noah’s dad is sure that the owner of the Coral Queen casino boat is flushing raw sewage into the harbor–which has made taking a dip at the local beach like swimming in a toilet. He can’t prove it though, and so he decides that sinking the boat will make an effective statement. Right. The boat is pumped out and back in business within days and Noah’s dad is stuck in the clink. Now Noah is determined to succeed where his dad failed. He will prove that the Coral Queen is dumping illegally . . . somehow. His allies may not add up to much–his sister Abbey, an unreformed childhood biter; Lice Peeking, a greedy sot with poor hygiene; Shelly, a bartender and a woman scorned; and a mysterious pirate–but Noah’s got a plan to flush this crook out into the open. A plan that should sink the crooked little casino, once and for all. From the Hardcover edition. |
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The Green Ripper by John D. MacDonald ( 1996)
In his 18th appearance ladykiller Travis McGee, finally loses his heart to a lovely lady named Gretel. But just as he begins to bear his soul, his confidant is gone. Killed by a mysterious illness, they say, but McGee doesn't believe it. Many women have come and gone from his houseboat, "The Busted Flush," but Gretel was special, and McGee won't give up until he learns the truth about her death.
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Hoot by Carl Hiaasen ( 2002)
Unfortunately, Roy’s first acquaintance in Florida is Dana Matherson, a well-known bully. Then again, if Dana hadn’t been sinking his thumbs into Roy’s temples and mashing his face against the school-bus window, Roy might never have spotted the running boy. And the running boy is intriguing: he was running away from the school bus, carried no books, and–here’s the odd part–wore no shoes. Sensing a mystery, Roy sets himself on the boy’s trail. The chase introduces him to potty-trained alligators, a fake-fart champion, some burrowing owls, a renegade eco-avenger, and several extremely poisonous snakes with unnaturally sparkling tails.
Roy has most definitely arrived in Carl Hiaasen’s Florida. |
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I'll Sleep When I'm Dead The Dirty Life And Times of Warren Zevon by Crystal Zevon ( 2007)
An oral biography chronicling the life and times of singer-songwriter Warren Zevon brings together conversations and interviews with Stevie Nicks, Jackson Browne, Tom Petty, Emmylou Harris, Linda Ronstadt, the Everly Brothers, and other friends, colleagues, and family members from California's rock scene.
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I'll Sleep When I'm Dead The Dirty Life and Times of Warren Zevon by Crystal Zevon ( 2008)
An oral biography chronicling the life and times of singer-songwriter Warren Zevon brings together conversations and interviews with Stevie Nicks, Jackson Browne, Tom Petty, Emmylou Harris, Linda Ronstadt, the Everly Brothers, and other friends, colleagues, and family members from California's rock scene. Reprint. 35,000 first printing.
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Kick Ass Selected Columns of Carl Hiaasen by Carl Hiaasen ( 1999)
A collection of over 200 of best-selling author Carl Hiaasen's Miami Hearld columns, written with the same dark humor & satricial wit as his fiction. Evokes the disastrously flawed paradise of modern South Florida, its developers, conmen, crooks, & cops.
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Lucky You by Carl Hiaasen ( 1998)
Grange, Florida is famous for its miracles: the Weeping Fiberglass Madonna, the Road Stain Jesus--and JoLayne Lucks, recent winner of the state's $28 million lottery! There's only one problem--someone else just never learned to share. So, when JoLayne's ticket is mysteriously stolen, the chase is on through the Sunshine State--wreaking the kind of hilarious mayhem Hiaasen is famous for.
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Lucky You / Sick Puppy Lucky You and Sick Puppy by Carl Hiaasen ( 2006) |
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Metzger's Dog Library Edition by Thomas Perry ( 2009)
Veteran CIA operative Ben Porterfield is ordered to recover some top-secret papers revealing covert CIA operations in Latin America from the terrorist organization that seized them inadvertently while stealing a million dollars worth of cocaine. Read by Michael Kramer. Book available.
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Naked Came the Manatee by Tananarive Due, James W. Hall, Les Standiford, Elmore Leonard, Dave Barry, Edna Buchanan, Paul Levine, Carl Hiaasen, John Dufresne, Vicki Hendricks, Brian Antoni, Carolina Hospital, Evelyn Mayerson ( 1998)
In South Florida, everyone wants to get a head. But not just any head. A very famous human head--severed and snugged away in a cryonic container. A head that could spark a revolution and change the course of history.Everybody wants a piece of the noggin: rotund gangster Big Joey G., a 102-year-old environmentalist, hard-boiled Miami reporter Britt Montero, lawyer Jake Lassiter, and a would-be dictator in exile--with ex-president Jimmy Carter and a lovable manatee named Booger thrown in for good measure.With bodies piling up its anybodys guess what will happen from one chapter to the next, as an all-star line-up of Florida's finest writers take turns at taking this outrageously original novel to the limit--and beyond.
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Native Tongue by Carl Hiaasen ( 2005) |
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Nature Girl by Carl Hiaasen ( 2008)
Honey Santana, the bipolar, self-proclaimed "queen of lost causes," has plans to give telemarketer Boyd Shreave and his mistress a lesson in civility, unware that she is being followed by her obsessed ex-employer Piejack, her one-time drug runner ex-husband Perry, and their twelve-year-old son, Fry, or that they will all intrude on the privacy of would-be recluse Sammy Tigertail. Reprint.
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Paradise Screwed Selected Columns of Carl Hiaasen by Carl Hiaasen, Diane Stevenson ( 2001)
The beloved Miami Herald columnist shares his best comic work, covering everything from sports and tourism to corruption in local politics, the Elian Gonzalez affair, and the 2000 presidential election recount, with his savage satiric wit.
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Powder Burn by Carl Hiaasen, William A. Montalbano ( 1981) |
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Powder Burn by Carl Hiaasen, William D. Montalbano ( 1998)
Architect Chris Meadows has the bad luck to see an old girlfriend get hit by a car full of drugland hitmen. He has the worse luck to see the face of her murderers. Because in a town as violent as Miami, a witness doesn't stand a chance--especially when the cops who ought to be protecting him are more interested in dangling him as live bait.
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Raton De Lengua Azul by Carl Hiaasen ( 1996) |
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S.o.s. La Odisea De Los Buhos / S.O.S the Odyssey of the Buhos by Carl Hiaasen ( 2006) |
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Scat by Carl Hiaasen ( 2009)
Although a strange note was left behind that explained her sudden absence from school, Nick and Marta are still doubtful about the whereabouts of their teacher, Mrs. Bunny Starch, since she went missing from a field trip to Black Vine Swamp, and so they set out together to discover the truth! Simultaneous.
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Sick Puppy by Carl Hiaasen ( 2001)
Eco-terrorists, evil politicians, a millionaire obsessed with Barbie, and an ex-governor named Skink are just a few of the characters who populate this comic novel of politics as unusual in Florida. Reissue.
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Skin Tight by Carl Hiaasen ( 2002)
Narrowly escaping an attempt on his life, former Florida state investigator Mick Stranahan wonders who wants him dead and finds suspects in a shaky plastic surgeon, a shady lawyer, and a sensational television host. Reissue.
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Skinny Dip by Carl Hiaasen ( 2004)
Chaz Perrone might be the only marine scientist in the world who doesn’t know which way the Gulf Stream runs. He might also be the only one who went into biology just to make a killing, and now he’s found a way–doctoring water samples so that a ruthless agribusiness tycoon can continue illegally dumping fertilizer into the endangered Everglades. When Chaz suspects that his wife, Joey, has figured out his scam, he pushes her overboard from a cruise liner into the night-dark Atlantic. Unfortunately for Chaz, his wife doesn’t die in the fall.
Clinging blindly to a bale of Jamaican pot, Joey Perrone is plucked from the ocean by former cop and current loner Mick Stranahan. Instead of rushing to the police and reporting her husband’s crime, Joey decides to stay dead and (with Mick’s help) screw with Chaz until he screws himself. As Joey haunts and taunts her homicidal husband, as Chaz’s cold-blooded cohorts in pollution grow uneasy about his ineptitude and increasingly erratic behavior, as Mick Stranahan discovers that six failed marriages and years of island solitude haven’t killed the reckless romantic in him, we’re taken on a hilarious, full-throttle, pure Hiaasen ride through the warped politics and mayhem of the human environment, and the human heart. |
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Stormy Weather by Carl Hiaasen ( 1996)
Two honeymooners wake up early, make love twice and brace themselves for a spectacle they won't be watching from the sidelines. A seductive con artist stumbles into a scam that promises more cool cash than the lottery. A shotgun-toting mobile home salesman is about to close a deal with disaster, while tourists by the thousands bail from the Florida Keys. They are now entering the hurricane zone where everyone is in for stormy weather.
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Strip Tease by Carl Hiaasen ( 1994)
When a strip-joint bachelor party gets out of hand, an honorable exotic dancer, a U.S. Congressman, a bouncer, and a clueless cop are swept into a wild case of extortion, greed, sex, and corruption.
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Striptease/Striptease by Carl Hiaasen, Demi Moore ( 1999) |
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Tan and Sandy Silence by John D. MacDonald ( 1996)
Travis McGee is enjoying the lazy, hazy days aboard his boat, "The Busted Flush," when a man brandishing a gun accuses him of hiding his errant wife. The missing woman is Mary Broll, an old friend of the accused. She's in trouble, and in his 13th adventure Travis looks high and low for his old pal.
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Team Rodent How Disney Devours the World by Carl Hiaasen ( 1998)
"Disney is so good at being good that it manifests an evil; so uniformly efficient and courteous, so dependably clean and conscientious, so unfailingly entertaining that its unreal, and therefore is an agent of pure wickedness. . . . Disney isnt in the business of exploiting Nature so much as striving to improve upon it, constantly fine-tuning Gods work."--from TEAM RODENTTEAM RODENTHow Disney Devours America"Revulsion is good. Revulsion is healthy. Each of us has limits, unarticulated boundaries of taste and tolerance, and sometimes we forget where they are. Peep Land is here to remind us; a fixed compass point by which we can govern our private behavior. Because being grossed out is essential to the human experience; without a perceived depravity, wed have nothing against which to gauge the advance or decline of culture; our art, our music, our cinema, our books. Without sleaze, the yardstick shrinks at both ends. Team Rodent doesnt believe in sleaze, however, nor in old-fashioned revulsion. Square in the middle is where it wants us all to be, dependable consumers with predictable attitudes. The message, never stated but avuncularly implied, is that America's values ought to reflect those of the Walt Disney Company, and not the other way around."
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Tourist Season by Carl Hiaasen ( 1987)
Here is Hiaasen's riotous tale of murder and high comedy involving football players, politicians, police...and a very hungry crocodile.
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Trap Line by Carl Hiaasen, William D. Montalbano ( 1982)
Tired, middle-aged boat captain Breeze Albury is forced to accept a run for Key West's drug cartel, a run that leads to betrayal, blackmail, death, and--for Breeze--a cunning retribution.
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Trap Line by Carl Hiaasen, William D. Montalbano ( 1998)
Key West is a smugglers paradise. All thats needed are the captains to run the contraband and Breeze Albury is one of the best fishing captains on the Rock. Hes in no mood to become the Machines delivery boy, however. So the Machine sets out to persuade him. It starts by taking away Alburys livelihood and his freedom. But when the Machine threatens Albury's son, the washed-out wharf rat turns into a raging, sea-going vigilante.
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Turquoise Lament by John D. MacDonald ( 1996)
Back in the day, Linda "Pidge" Lewellen had a schoolgirl crush on Travis McGee. Now she's all grown up and has a husband who she swears is trying to kill her. Travis doesn't think husband Howie has the smarts or the gumption to maneuver something like that, and he placates her fears, sending the pair off sailing to make up. But it may be the worst miscalculation of McGee's life, and one that could end Linda's.
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