Star Island

Review by New York Times Review

Whenever it seems as if he might be running out of oxen to gore, Carl Hiaasen comes up with fresh victims for his killing wit. In STAR ISLAND (Knopf, $26.95), Florida's most entertainingly indignant social critic is in high dudgeon about those prodigal celebrities who descend on Miami with their uncouth fans and surly entourages, selfishly appropriating South Beach as their personal playground. Bundling up the most outrageous demands and self-indulgent behavior of this egocentric tribe into one over-the-top caricature, Hiaasen presents us with Cherry Pye, a 22-year-old pop star whose every display of narcissistic excess will send a frisson of horrified delight up your spine. When first met, this divine monster is vomiting into a silver-plated ice bucket, en route to Jackson Memorial Hospital after ingesting copious amounts of "vodka, Red Bull, hydrocodone, birdseed and stool softener" in the drug-addled belief that she might be reborn as a cockatoo. But not to worry. Ann DeLusia, Cherry's "undercover stunt double," is already on the job, impersonating the fun-loving star while the genuine article is whisked off to rehab - eluding even Cherry's savvy paparazzo stalker, Bang Abbott, who's counting on her to have a spectacular flame-out before the release of her comeback album, "Skantily Klad." Since Cherry is too spaced out to know she even has a double, it doesn't cramp her wild-child style when Bang mistakenly kidnaps Ann. But everyone else playing on Team Cherry - a roguish company that includes the star's pushy mother and sleazy promoter; cold-blooded twin publicists; and a hulking bodyguard, the freakishly disfigured Chemo - is quick to see the gravity of the situation. Trying to follow the plot, which involves a supporting cast of crooked politicians and predatory developers, is a little like walking a puppy. But the outlandish events soar on the exuberance of Hiaasen's manic style, a canny blend of lunatic farce and savage satire. (Chemo, who wears a prosthetic weed-whacker, shows his superior grasp of comic weaponry by taking a cattle prod to Cherry whenever she uses the words "awesome," "sweet," "sick," "totally" and "hot.") Although South Beach doesn't need saving the way the Everglades do, its loose values make it a natural magnet for the free-booting exploiters who arouse Hiaasen's scorn - and, in Cherry's case, his dumb-founded awe. Martin Walker's bucolic mysteries set in the fruitful Périgord region of France offer a gentle reminder to slow down and smell the grapes. Having captured the area's robust flavor and sleepy pace in "Bruno, Chief of Police," Walker returns to the tiny village of Saint-Denis in THE DARK VINEYARD (Knopf, $23.95) to confound Bruno Courrèges, the local policeman, with a suspicious fire at an agricultural research station experimenting with genetically modified crops. Perhaps coincidentally, an American businessman arrives in the district with a proposal to establish a winery that would alter the face of the countryside. Bruno handles both cases with great discretion, circulating so quietly and tactfully among his neighbors that his interviews are more like friendly visits. It's a wonderful detection method and an even cannier literary strategy, allowing Walker to pursue the plot of his mystery while beguiling the reader with extended scenes of village market days, old-fashioned wine harvests and some exceptionally congenial dinner parties. Since we can't seem to get enough of sleeper spies, let's look in on Louis Morgon, the retired C.I.A. undercover operative who figures in Peter Steiner's sweetly sane novels of international intrigue. In THE TERRORIST (Thomas Dunne/Minotaur, $23.99), Louis, now 71, is still living in the little French town of Saint Leon but making trips to Algiers to visit Zariana Lefort, the son of a colleague killed in Marseilles. In arranging to send the 16-year-old boy to school in Washington, Louis attracts the notice of a rogue agent who figures them both for covert operatives and has Zaharia thrown into a black-ops prison in Tajikistan. Or possibly Uzbekistan. Even as Louis insists that "I'm too old for danger," he flies to Cairo to find a bona fide terrorist to swap for his ward. While it can't be said that any of this is the least bit plausible, Steiner presents us with a reassuring fantasy world in which rash youths bow to the wisdom of their elders, terrorists abort their missions out of compassion for their human targets and the innocent victims of egregious acts of cruelty find it in their hearts to forgive. If exposure to the glories of Florence can elevate the creative output of artists and poets, you'd think the city might give a little boost to the turgid style of a best-selling author like Lorenzo Carcaterra. But no. Although MIDNIGHT ANGELS (Ballantine, $26) does raise the exciting prospect of watching rival teams of art hunters, the Vittoria Society and the Immortals, fighting it out for possession of three lost master-pieces by Michelangelo, this Big Kids Adventure Book turns out to be just another camera-ready thriller. The style veers from flat description, as applied to monuments like the Duomo and the Vasari Corridor (where the sculptures are hidden in a secret room), to pure hyperbole, which works fine in action scenes but pumps up the characters to cartoon dimension. If it weren't for pleasurable incidentals like a vignette of the "vibrant pageantry" of a Sunday morning in the city, we might as well be on a film set. The loose values of South Beach make it a natural magnet for the exploiters who arouse Carl Hiaasen's scorn.

Copyright (c) The New York Times Company [August 1, 2010]

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Review by Booklist Review

*Starred Review* Twentysomething pop star Cherry Pye has long been inclined toward bad behavior, whether it's bedding dubious men or snorting copious lines of coke. Lucky for her, Pye's manager parents have hired a body double named Ann DeLusia to keep up appearances. For years, Ann has come to the rescue whenever the singer is too drunk or doped up to be seen in public. All goes along well until the day Ann is kidnapped by a deranged paparazzo (Is there any other kind?), and Cherry's beleaguered mom and dad must figure out a way to get her back without Cherry finding out. (The singer, it seems, has been kept in the dark about Ann, and they intend to keep it that way.) Meanwhile, Cherry has to contend with a new bodyguard named Chemo, whom Hiaasen fans will remember as the belligerent, weed-whacker-wielding ex-con from Skin Tight (1989). Also returning here is reader favorite Skink, the onetime Florida governor with a glass eye and an insatiable appetite for roadkill. Hiaasen, author of 11 previous crime novels and 3 best-selling children's books, is at his gleeful best skewering the morally bankrupt. He has plenty to poke fun at here, from a reprehensible real-estate developer with an excruciating groin injury to twin publicists Botoxed within an inch of their lives. This is classic Hiaasen demented, hilarious, and utterly over the top.--Block, Allison Copyright 2010 Booklist

From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.

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Review by Publisher's Weekly Review

The career of singer Cheryl Bunterman (aka Cherry Pye), who debuted with Jailbait Records at age 15, is foundering due to her lack of talent and indiscriminate appetite for drugs, booze, and sex in this outrageous, offbeat novel from Hiaasen (Nature Girl). Among those struggling to keep Cherry's career afloat are her mother, Janet Bunterman; producer Maury Lykes; and "undercover stunt double" Ann DeLusia, who will, say, mislead the press into thinking Cherry is out and about when she's really in rehab. Hiaasen has easy targets in misbehaving celebrity sightings, tabloid stalkings, and spin control experts, and he makes the most of them. Crooked real estate developer Jackie Sebago and paparazzo Bang Abbott, who plans to hitch his wagon to Cherry's star, add to the madcap fun. Mayhem follows after Bang kidnaps Ann instead of Cherry by mistake, and ex-Florida governor and eco-vigilante Clinton "Skink" Tyree, who was smitten with Ann after a chance encounter, rushes to her rescue. The torrent of pop culture barbs are bound to please Hiaasen's ardent fans. 500,000 first printing; 12-city author tour. (Aug.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved

(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved

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Review by Library Journal Review

At age 22, Cherry Pye is a fading pop star whose handlers, manager, and publicity gurus are trying frantically to orchestrate a comeback-with little help from Cherry-while keeping her fragile emotional state a closely guarded secret. The plan seems to be working until Cherry overdoses-again-and in the resulting melee, one of the ever-present paparazzi kidnaps Ann DeLusia, Cherry's stunt double, thinking he has the real star. A master at character creation, Hiaasen (Nature Girl) has amassed as weird a cast as ever graced Miami Beach, including a one-armed bodyguard with a unique prosthesis, an obsessed paparazzo whose unwashed state and obsession are an affront to all but Cherry, fraternal twins who have spent thousands of dollars to look identical, and Skink, the reclusive former governor of Florida, who lives in the wilderness of the Florida Keys and uses every ploy at his command to thwart development of the state's natural lands. Verdict This rollicking tour de force lampoons south Florida's celebrity subculture while including the obligatory environmental subplot for which Hiaasen is known. Highly recommended. [A 500,000-copy first printing; 12-city tour.]-Thomas L. Kilpatrick, formerly with Southern Illinois Univ., Carbondale (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

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Review by Kirkus Book Review

Now that the Florida real-estate market has gone bust, the insatiable bottom-feeders circle a hilariously untalented starlet, everyone looking for a piece of her before she too crashes and burns.Cherry Pyeor "the former Cheryl Bunterman," as Hiaasen calls herhas been in the public eye for half of her 22 years. All that media exposure has taught her some valuable lessons. She knows that she has a natural right to have everyone else dance attendance on her; she knows how to score every drug on the planet and how to mix them with piquant results; and she's even learning how to lip-synch the lyrics a less scarifying vocal artist has supplied for her second comeback album, Skantily Klad.Cherry's circle of hangers-on can't match her impervious innocence. Her botoxed twin publicists, Lucy and Lila Lark, are constantly cooking up new schemes without revealing them to her. Unbeknownst to her, her parents have long engaged savvy actress Ann DeLuisa to act as her "undercover stunt double," circulating among her wide-eyed public when she's indisposed, and decoying paparazzi like Bang Abbott, whose Pulitzer Prize is just a tad tarnished. Her pederast promoter Maury Lykes has hired her a new bodyguard, Chemo, whose ideas about cutting himself in for a bigger slice of the action are as inventive as his anatomy (his severed hand has been replaced by a prosthetic weedwhacker). When Bang, whose improbable mile-high hookup with Cherry has given him stratospheric dreams of his own, carjacks Ann out from under Chemo's nose under the impression that she's Cherry, and Ann begs Skink, the homeless exFlorida governor who's sweet on her, to come to her rescue, the plot may seem to be boiling over. In the hands of a master farceur like Hiaasen (Nature Girl, 2006, etc.), however, the major hijinks are just beginning.Clueless celebrities and criminal paparazzi provide the perfect match and the perfect metaphor for contemporary public culture. And you never know which sentences are going to end with a back flip.]] Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

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1 On the fifteenth of March, two hours before sunrise, an emergency medical technician named Jimmy Campo found a sweaty stranger huddled in the back of his ambulance. It was parked in a service alley behind the Stefano Hotel, where Jimmy Campo and his partner had been summoned to treat a twenty-two-year-old white female who had swallowed an unwise mix of vodka, Red Bull, hydrocodone, birdseed and stool softener--in all respects a routine South Beach 911 call, until now. The stranger in Jimmy Campo's ambulance had two 35-mm digital cameras hanging from his fleshy neck, and a bulky gear bag balanced on his ample lap. He wore a Dodgers cap and a Bluetooth ear set. His ripe, florid cheeks glistened damply, and his body reeked like a prison laundry bag. "Get out of my ambulance," Jimmy Campo said. "Is she dead?" the man asked excitedly. "Dude, I'm callin' the cops if you don't move it." "Who's with her up there--Colin? Shia?" The stranger outweighed Jimmy Campo by sixty-five pounds but not an ounce of it was muscle. Jimmy Campo, who'd once been a triathlete, dragged the intruder from the vehicle and deposited him on the sticky pavement beneath a streetlight. "Chill, for Christ's sake," the man said, examining his camera equipment for possible damage. Stray cats tangled and yowled somewhere in the shadows. Inside the ambulance, Jimmy Campo found what he was looking for: a sealed sterile packet containing a coiled intravenous rig to replace the one that the female overdose victim had ripped from her right arm while she was thrashing on the floor. The stranger struggled to his feet and said, "I'll give you a thousand bucks." "For what?" "When you bring her downstairs, lemme take a picture." The man dug into the folds of his stale trousers and produced a lump of cash. "You gotta job to do, and so do I. Here's a grand." Jimmy Campo looked at the money in the stranger's hand. Then he glanced up at the third floor of the hotel, where his partner was almost certainly dodging vomit. "Is she famous or somethin'?" Jimmy Campo asked. The photographer chuckled. "Man, you don't even know?" Jimmy Campo was thinking about the fifty-two-inch high-def that he'd seen on sale at Brands Mart. He was thinking about his girlfriend on a rampage with his maxed-out MasterCard at the Dadeland Mall. He was thinking about all those nasty letters from his credit union. "Whoever she is, she's not dead," he told the photographer. "Not tonight." "Cool." The man continued to hold out the wad of hundreds in the glow of the streetlight, as if teasing a mutt with raw hamburger. He said, "All you gotta do, before loading her in the wagon, just pull down the covers and step away so I can get my shot. Five seconds is all I need." "It won't be pretty. She's a sick young lady." Jimmy Campo took the crumpled money and smoothed it into his wallet. "Is she awake at least?" the photographer asked. "On and off." "But you could see her eyes in a picture, right? She's got those awesome sea-green eyes." Jimmy Campo said, "I didn't notice." "You really don't know who she is? Seriously?" "Who do you work for, anyway?" "A limited partnership," the man said. "Me, myself and I." "And where can I see this great picture you're gonna take?" "Everywhere. You'll see it everywhere," the stranger said. Eighteen minutes later, Jimmy Campo and his partner emerged from the Stefano Hotel guiding a collapsible stretcher upon which lay a slender, motionless form. The photographer was surprised at the absence of a retinue; no bodyguards or boyfriends or hangers-on. A lone Miami Beach police officer followed the stretcher down the alley. When the photographer began snapping pictures, the cop barely reacted, making no effort to shield the stricken woman from the flash bursts. That should have been a clue. Sliding closer, the paparazzo intercepted the stretcher as it rolled with an oscillating squeak toward the open end of the ambulance. True to his word, Jimmy Campo tugged down the sheet and stepped away, leaving an opening. "Cherry!" the photographer shouted at the slack face. "Cherry, baby, how 'bout a big smile for your fans?" The young woman's incurious eyes were open. They were not sea-green, mint-green, pea-green or any hue of green. They were brown. "Goddammit," the photographer growled, lowering his Nikon. The woman on the stretcher grinned behind the oxygen mask and blew him a kiss. Grabbing at Jimmy Campo's arm, the photographer cried, "Gimme back my money!" "Mister, I don't know what you're talking about," said the paramedic, elbowing the sweaty creep back into the shadows. Excerpted from Star Island by Carl Hiaasen All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.

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