Fever beach

Fever beach

Carl Hiaasen

Book - 2025

"'The afternoon of September first, dishwater-gray and rainy, a man named Dale Figgo picked up a hitchhiker on Gus Grissom Boulevard in Tangelo Falls, Florida. The hitchhiker, who reminded Figgo of Danny DeVito, asked for a lift to the interstate. Figgo said he'd take him there after finishing an errand.' Thus begins Fever Beach, with an errand that leads--in pure Hiaasen-style--into the depths of Florida at its most Floridian: a sun-soaked bastion of right-wing extremism, white power, greed, and corruption. Figgo, it turns out, is the only hate-monger ever to be kicked out of the Proud Boys for being too dumb and incompetent. On January 6, 2021 he thought he was defacing a statue of Ulysses S. Grant, but he wound up spr...eading feces all over a statue of James Zacharia George, a Civil War Confederate war leader. Figgo's already messy life is about to get more complicated, thanks to two formidable adversaries. Viva Morales is a newly transplanted Floridian, a clever woman recently taken to the cleaners by her ex-husband, now working at the Mink Foundation, a supposedly philanthropical organization, and renting a room in Figgo's apartment because there's no place else she can afford. Twilly Spree has an anger management problem, especially when it comes to those who deface the environment, and way too many inherited millions of dollars. He's living alone a year after his dog died, two years after he sank a city councilman's party barge, and three years after his divorce. Viva and Twilly are plunged into a mystery--involving dark money and darker motives--they are determined to solve, and become entangled in a world populated by some of Hiaasen's most outrageous characters: Claude and Electra Mink--billionaire philanthropists with way too much plastic surgery and a secret right-wing agenda--and Congressman Clure Boyette--who dreams of being Florida's (and maybe America's) most important politician. The only things standing in his way are his love for hookers and young girls, and his total lack of intelligence. We meet Noel Kristianson--a Scandinavian agnostic injured when Figgo thinks he's a Jewish threat to humanity and runs him over with his car; Jonus Onus--Figgo's partner in white power idiocy; and many, many more. Hiaasen ties them all together and delivers them to their appropriate fates, in his wildest and most entertaining novel to date"--

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1st Floor New Shelf FICTION/Hiaasen Carl (NEW SHELF) Due Aug 31, 2025
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Subjects
White supremacy movements > United States > Fiction.
Right-wing extremists > United States > Fiction.
Politicians > Corrupt practices > Fiction.
Charities > Corrupt practices > Fiction.
Florida > Fiction.
Social problem fiction.
Thrillers (Fiction)
Satirical fiction.
Novels.
Genres
Social problem fiction
Thrillers (Fiction)
Satirical fiction
Novels
Published
New York : Alfred A. Knopf 2025.
Language
English
Main Author
Carl Hiaasen (author)
Edition
First hardcover edition
Physical Description
367 pages ; 25 cm
ISBN
9780593320945
9780593315477
Contents unavailable.
Review by Booklist Review

Remember Twilly Spree? The independently wealthy sometime ecowarrior who appeared in Hiaasen's Sick Puppy (2000) and Scat (2009)? He's in this new book, too, which is one of many things the novel has going for it. It also has Dale Figgo, a right-wing nutcase who was too crazy for the Proud Boys; Viva Morales, who's renting a room from Dale, and whose bosses, a pair of alleged philanthropists, are almost certainly up to no good; an ambitious and deeply corrupt congressman; Dale's mom, who isn't thrilled about what her son is doing with his life; and a bunch of other delightfully weird characters. There is a serious story to be told about right-wing conspiracists, corrupt politicians, and shady philanthropists, and Hiaasen is sort of telling that story, but mostly he's making us laugh--and not polite little giggles, either. We're talking giant belly laughs, embarrass-yourself-in-public spleen-busters. This could be his funniest book yet.

From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review

Bestseller Hiaasen (Squeeze Me) continues to romp through Florida's looniest corners in this hilarious send-up of white supremacists, crooked politicians, and the quirky citizens who oppose them. Dale Figgo is a down-on-his-luck neo-Nazi who has been rejected by both the Proud Boys and the Oath Keepers for smearing feces on the wrong statue on January 6, but it looks like his ship may be coming in. Congressman Clure Boyette has successfully solicited $2 million from racist philanthropists Claude and Electra Mink to fund Dale's nascent far-right organization, Strokers for Liberty, laundering the cash through a Habitat for Humanity knockoff that uses child labor. Opposing those bozos are Viva Morales, the Mink foundation's dissatisfied "wealth director" and Dale's reluctant tenant; independently wealthy social justice crusader Twilly Spree, who meets Viva by chance on a flight; and underage sex worker Galaxy, who has dirt on Boyette. Viva uncovers much of what's going on by fake-dating Boyette and snooping around Dale's house and recruits Twilly to help her topple their scheme--but Dale and his crew fail mostly through their own incompetence. This funhouse-mirror satire offers welcome opportunities to laugh at the absurdities of 21st-century politics. It's Hiaasen at his finest. Agent: Esther Newberg, CAA. (May)

(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Review by Kirkus Book Review

Florida's preeminent satirist returns to the fray with a worm's-eye view of MAGA World. In his time off from packaging Dream Booty sex dolls for Bottom Drawer Novelties, Dale Figgo does his patriotic best to save the nation by hurling plastic bags weighted with sand and filled with antisemitic epithets onto the lawns of gated communities. The disapproving tenant in his extra bedroom, Viva Morales, works as "wealth director" for the Mink Foundation, a nothingburger position that would bother her a lot more if she knew the fate of Rachel Cohen, the predecessor who uncovered some secret details that cofounders Claude and Electra Mink wanted to keep secret. Congressional Representative Clure Boyette, in the middle of what should be an easy reelection campaign and a much tougher divorce from his wife, Nicki, who's collected abundant evidence of his infidelities, wants the Minks to fund Wee Hammers, which is just like Habitat for Humanity except that the habitats are built by child labor. Figgo and his best friend, white supremacist Jonas Onus, have a serious falling out over the demand by Clure's father, kingmaker Clay Boyette, that Figgo accept Onus as an equal partner in Strokers for Liberty, the organization of lunatic activists he's founded, and a calamitous demonstration at a gay bar in Key West. It all sounds so busy, dizzy, and fizzy that it makes perfect sense when Janice Eileen Smith, who in her role as Galaxy is Clure's mistress in every sense of the word, breaks away from him, bonds with Viva, and starts her own counterplot, just like every other member of the cast. The perfect antidote for anyone who doomscrolls daily headlines: more crazed, rollicking, sharply written sendups like this. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

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