Skin Tight

From Publishers Weekly Hiaasen's latest thriller is his funniest and sharpest novel to date. Set in a south Florida swarming with ripoff artists, crooked cops, nude sunbathers and corrupt politicians, it features a Mafia-connected plastic surgeon with butterfingers, a bitchy Hollywood starlet, a remarkably inept hit man and a pompous TV journalist "nationally famous for getting beaten up on camera." Retired state investigator Mick Stranahan, the hero, kills an intruder in his seaside house on stilts by impaling him with a trophy spearfish. Then one of his five ex-wives is found drowned. Due to an unresolved missing-person case, someone wants Stranahan eliminated, and his efforts to flush out the mixed bag of bad guys let Hiaasen ( Tourist Season ; Double Wham my ) display his manic sense of humor at every turn. The cynical sleuth has just the right mix of sour and smarts to get a fix on a mad world. This wickedly amusing story is the work of a keen satirist who off-handedly exposes the moral rot at every level of society. 50,000 first printing; $50,000 ad/promo; Literary Guild, Mystery Guild and Doubleday Book Club alternates. Copyright 1989 Reed Business Information, Inc. From the Inside Flap "Good, mean fun...A twisting, high-speed ride on a roller coaster without brakes." SAN FRANCISCO CHRONICLE Somebody wants Mick Stranahan dead, and the list of possible players is long: the plastic surgeon with the extremely shaky hands, the sleazy lawyer who advertises, the TV host whose taste for sensationalism is exceeded only by his vanity, and the hit man whose skin problems could fill a comprehensive (if bizarre) medical textbook. The whole thing is downright harrowing. It's Hiaasen at his best. And his best is very, very good. A Selection of the Literary Guild, the Doubleday Book Club and the Mystery Guild From the Paperback edition.