It’s always interesting to read books like this from a pre-internet era and muse on how different the world was a very short time ago. So many plot points here would just disappear if google existed in Mick Stranahan’s world. It’s almost quaint reading the leaps our hero makes to trap a killer plastic surgeon, the strings he pulls and the traps he sets in 1980’s Florida that would be completely unnecessary now. There’s a cute scene involving an accurate sketch of the doctor’s hired goon (the victim of a dermatology accident) being fleshed out by stippling the skin with a pencil skimmed over salt, that in 2019 would be rendered completely unnecessary with everyone having a camera phone.
Which is kind of the biggest problem in the book too – for each “heh, we used to have to actually ask people for information” there are two “right, but there is no WAY that would’ve worked” moments. I like Hiaasen and his “ain’t Florida crazy” over the top stories, but Mick Stranahan could not possibly have learned as much as he did without the internet, set as many traps without several assistants, or solved this case through social connection alone. And it’s overstuffed – too many characters, too many plot threads. There’s entirely too much coincidence in this book to be as enjoyable as some of Hiaasen’s later works, to say nothing of the retrograde social politics that are an unfortunate reflection of the era it was written in.
This isn’t terrible, but Hiaasen’s done better.
