by Carl Hiaasen
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Product Description
Take one dead rock roll star, his Courtney Love-type widow, themysterious deaths of his former bandmates, and the lost tracks of a comebackalbum. Stir in Jack Tagger, a middle-aged investigative reporter obsessed withdeath since his banishment to the obit desk; a fetching young editor with a yenfor our hero; and a boss looking for a reason to fire him. Put them in the handsof a master like Carl Hiaasen, who adds his trademark flourishes (who else woulduse a frozen lizard as a weapon?) to a creaky plot like this one, and the resultis a winner. Florida is full of caper writers with journalistic credentials, andplenty of them have a deft hand with quirky characters, but no one in the genreis better than Hiaasen. --Jane Adams
Amazon.com
Take one dead rock & roll star, his Courtney Love-type widow, the mysterious deaths of his former bandmates, and the lost tracks of a comeback album. Stir in Jack Tagger, a middle-aged investigative reporter obsessed with death since his banishment to the obit desk; a fetching young editor with a yen for our hero; and a boss looking for a reason to fire him. Put them in the hands of a master like Carl Hiaasen, who adds his trademark flourishes (who else would use a frozen lizard as a weapon?) to a creaky plot like this one, and the result is a winner. Florida is full of caper writers with journalistic credentials, and plenty of them have a deft hand with quirky characters, but no one in the genre is better than Hiaasen. --Jane Adams
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Average Customer Review:
0 of 0 people found the following review helpful:
 Average, 2008-06-25
I have read nearly all of Carl Hiaasen's books and I have found that he is becoming less humourous as time goes on. His first few books were brilliant black comedy but since then they have taken a decided turn for the worse.
I found Sick Puppy was terrible and unreadable.
Fortunately, Basket Case is a superior product. Not much humour in it and more mystery but at least it was readable.
I miss the old Hiaasen books.......
0 of 0 people found the following review helpful:
 dang straight funny..., 2008-03-03
I'll simply say that I think this is my favorite Hiassen book to date. That says a bunch!
12 of 12 people found the following review helpful:
"Bring whipped cream and an English saddle.", 2008-01-09
Forty-six-year-old Jack Tagger has been consigned to writing the obituary column for the past six years after publicly challenging the qualifications of Race Maggad, the new owner of the South Florida newspaper where he works. When he discovers that a former favorite singer, Jimmy Stoma of the Slut Puppies, has died in a diving accident, he decides to investigate--secretly--to keep the Metro department from stealing his potential story. The wild ride that follows takes the reader into the realm of pop music, where Jimmy's less-than-mournful widow Cleo Rio plans her own second CD, aided by an assortment of sleazy characters. As Jimmy's former bandmates also begin to die, Jack Tagger searches for a motive and focuses on Cleo and her producers.
As the resourceful Jack is investigating Jimmy Stoma's death, he is also being pressured to write an early obituary of the former owner of the newspaper--Old Man Polk, who is perennially close to death. Polk, during a hospital interview with Jimmy, confesses that he, too, is appalled by the direction in which Race Maggad has taken the paper, and he has a plan of action to keep things from getting worse. If all this "excitement" were not enough, Jack falls in lust, is victimized by a break-in, gets beaten more than once, and discovers that two women involved with the case have disappeared. His use of a frozen lizard as a weapon reminds the Hiassen fan of Mick Stranahan's use of a stuffed marlin for similar purposes in Skin Tight, and his unbridled libido keeps the action high on more than one level.
Told in the first person, the story gets some life as the reader empathizes with Jack and his self-created predicaments, but the story line follows a traditional mystery story line. Not as tight as some of Hiaasen's earlier stories, the plot wanders and the humor is not as mordant. Well before the end of the story, the reader knows what the outcome is and who the murderer is, but many pages elapse after that in which the author ties up loose ends, explains what happens later, brings closure to a number of issues that have been raised throughout the story, and gives an epilogue to "conclude" a story which could have been concluded at several earlier points in the novel.
Though the novel is fun to read, as are all Hiaasen novels, it is not so off-the-wall, edgy, and sometimes bizarre as the novels which made Hiaasen's reputation. The humor here is more traditional--not so quirky, unexpected, and sexy as some other Hiaasen offerings--and Jack himself, while an iconoclast, is not the free spirit we have come to expect of Hiaasen's heroes. Several years after challenging Race Maggad, he has continued to work for the same paper--writing obituaries--with no apparent plans to assert himself. Filled with pointed satire of the newspaper business, the result, obviously, of Hiaasen's own experience in that business in South Florida, this enjoyable Hiaasen "lite" offering, while not on the "best list," is still great fun to read. Mary Whipple
Skin Tight
Tourist Season
Native Tongue
0 of 0 people found the following review helpful:
 Still on the way down, 2007-09-26
For me, Hiaasen's work has gone downhill steadily from the awesome standards he set with Tourist Season and Double Whammy. I still very much liked Skin Tight and Native Tongue, even Striptease had its moments, but from then on I got the feeling that even the author wasn't really enjoying himself. Lucky You was pretty silly, Stormy Weather and Sick Puppy a pair of interchangeable bores, so with Basket Case he has made an effort to freshen things up by adopting the first-person, present-tense approach. Nah. Didn't work. You get the feeling he signed a lucrative 10-book deal with his publisher and is cranking them out so he can go do something else which he enjoys.
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
Every bit as good as his other ones, 2007-07-15
I think everyone has missed the boat about Carl Hiaasen.
Why does Carl write these books?
Because he can - sure.
Because he can use the money - well, natch.
But also, I believe, because he really, seriously wants to alert the country to some important things he believes in. And his particular talent - writing wonderfully readable thrillers loaded with comedy - is a way to reach the public. Or at least those members of it who read...a somewhat diminishing crowd.
So the reviewers who complain about the environmental emphasis in many books are missing the point. It MATTERS to Carl.
And that means that "Basket Case" is not really different from his other books. It's just in support of a different cause. It's a voice - alas, somewhat in the desert - crying out against the ghastly combination of power freaks, greed maniacs, and bean-counters who are trashing what was once a magnificent fourth estate.
Read "Basket Case" and enjoy -just don't discount the ferocity of the protests against today's evil media moguls. Whether alerting people across the nation to what is going on will enable anything to change, I don't know, but I wish the cause every success. Unfortunately, things have been getting worse,not better, since he wrote "Basket Case."
Hey, what about the book itself? Is it a great read?
Is it ever!
Let me just tempt you with a few snippets. The story is outlined in plenty of other reviews. Here are a few tiny tastes of the laconic humor that jumps off almost every page.
Jack. the reporter, is hoping to get a prosecutor, Rick Tarkington, involved in the case involving the suspicous death of a former rock star. "I had hoped it would work in my favor that the prosecutor is a rock'n roller. On the wall behind his desk is a photo of the Rolling Stones taken backstage at the Orange Bowl. The picture is signed: "To R.T., Thanks for not searching my dressing room. Keith."
Jack - or maybe Carl - doesn't care for some chain restaurants. "From the pancake house I drive directly to the county morgue. The contrast in ambience is not especially striking."
A quick one for baseball fans:
"He grabs a beer for himself and sits down in one of the matching faded armchairs. "The Marlins are playing," he says.
"That's a matter of opinion."
On GPS:
"The only drawback of this astounding technology is that it allows virtually any knucklehead to blunder into the deepest wilderness, with little or no chance of getting lost. So much for natural selection."
Or the hilarious vision:
Carla, young daughter of Jacks' previous major flame and a sympathetic buddy to Jack:
"I'm thinking of having my tongue pierced."
"Stop right there." I raise both hands.
"All I want to know is, would it make a difference in the b.j. department? My girlfriend Rae, she says the guys go crazy. She's got a half-carat ruby on a platinum post."
"And that doesn't interfere with her tuba lessons?"
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