Squeeze Me by Carl Hiaasen
What's It About?
"Vintage Hiaasen — wry humor, social commentary and satire akin to Jonathan Swift, and all fun." —Oline H. Cogdill, The South Florida Sun-Sentinel“Scabrous and unrelentingly hilarious … the Trump era is truly Carl Hiaasen’s moment.” —Richard Lipez, The Washington Post
I needed this book. You probably do too. It’s been six months and counting of apocalyptic anxiety and stress. The coming months do not promise to be much better. If you are in need of reprieve, if you long to laugh with vicarious vengeance, then I would prescribe Carl Hiaasen’s latest novel, Squeeze Me (Knopf).
This time out, the standard-bearer of the comic mystery has chosen a setting that seems custom-made for a Hiaasen story: Palm Beach, Florida. Indeed, it’s a bit of a surprise that it’s taken him this long to set his sights on this island enclave for the ultra-rich, roughly seventy-five miles north of Miami. These days, it may be best known for its two most famous denizens in recent memory: Donald Trump and Jeffrey Epstein.
Which is to say, this rarified pocket of South Florida wealth has been known to attract its share of greedheads and human scum. Hiaasen relishes such targets. This is not a man who abides amoral wealth and power. They always get their comeuppance — usually in deliciously violent ways.
A THINLY VEILED POLITICAL SATIRE
The current president and first lady remain unnamed throughout the novel. However, the presence of Trump and Melania pervade its pages with a spot-on lack of subtlety. To wit: instead of Mar-a-Lago, the president’s Winter White House is called Casa Bellicosa. (Drop the ‘a’ at the end and add an ‘e’ and you get the idea …)
The first lady goes only by her Secret Service name — Mockingbird — which she appreciates after watching a YouTube video and learning these birds are “crafty, graceful, and melodious” — adjectives she herself could once relate to. As for the unnamed but utterly Trumpian president, he too is referenced only by his Secret Service name: Mastodon. This is an extinct version of a mammoth, not that the president knows it. It’s also a short linguistic leap to “Master Don;” again, Hiaasen’s not going for subtle here.
Of course, it wouldn’t be a Carl Hiaasen plot without featuring the Sunshine State’s environmental madness. In this case, it’s the all-too-real threat of an invasive species that’s a monstrously large apex predator: the Burmese python. These beasts — which can grow to over twenty feet in length and have been known to feast on deer — are a rapidly expanding threat to the South Florida ecosystem. (Google it and be prepared to be freaked out.)
For a writer of Hiaasen’s warped wit and imagination, it doesn’t take much of a jump from a snake eating a small deer to it feasting on a diminutive wealthy widow on Palm Beach. Pity poor Kiki Pew Fitzsimmons, “eighty-eight pounds when soaking wet,” when she goes for a wasted walk during one of the island’s ubiquitous charity events in the opening pages.
Devoured by an eighteen-foot python who’s made its way onto Palm Beach: it’s a macabre way for a widow to go. It’s also vintage Hiaasen.
Because conservative Kiki was a committed supporter of the president, her disappearance soon becomes a high-profile search, rife with political scapegoats. Kiki was a leading member of the Potussies — a group of randy senior women with a hot spot for the commander-in-chief. The president won’t miss an opportunity to implicate the immigrants in his midst, despite the lady-sized bulge that was seen in the snake’s belly.
A FURIOUS AND FUNNY TAKE ON THE NOT-TOO-DISTANT FUTURE
The word-play and absurdity may be broad, but there’s nothing cheap about the laughs Hiaasen delivers. The brilliance of his writing is rooted in moral outrage. Like all master satirists, his humor seems to be chosen in favor of, well, bottomless existential despair. As outlandish as many of his scenes may seem, his fiction is grounded more in truth than many of us would care to contemplate.
While awards and critical adulation tend to favor the serious, the best writers have always known that it’s a lot harder to make a reader laugh than to cry. Take a look at the front page of any newspaper over the last two hundred days and tell me otherwise. Hiaasen knows this. As a longtime columnist for the Miami Herald, he is as much newspaperman as he is novelist. While he takes no prisoners in neither his journalism nor his fiction, it’s his novels that pack the real punch. Equal parts furious and funny, the greedheads and the human scum always pay for their sins.
If only such were the case in reality.
Finally, of note: This may be the first release by a major author that references the pandemic as a seamless part of the plot. It’s slipped in on a number of occasions — alluding to the last decimated social season in Palm Beach, due to the coronavirus, which thankfully has passed. Given the long lead-times in publishing, one can imagine a degree of scrambling, as Hiaasen smartly added these asides at the eleventh hour, before the novel went to press.
This presents an odd sense of both timeliness and too-soon speculation. As the pandemic rages on, one would have to place this plot in the near, hopeful future. In Squeeze Me, the coronavirus is behind us, with Palm Beach’s decadent elite returning to their version of “normal.”
Yet, Hiaasen doesn’t seem to have much faith in a new presidential administration coming this fall. Of the many scandals and indignities this president faces (a “penile-enhancement” is one inspired choice), he references “both” impeachment trials. Meaning, in Squeeze Me’s not-too-distant future, the pandemic might be gone, but we’re in store for four more years of “Mastodon” and his fervent supporters, the Potussies.
