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Once a hotshot investigative reporter, Jack Tagger now bangs out obituaries for a South Florida daily, plotting to resurrect my newspaper career by yoking my byline to some famous stiff. Jimmy Stoma, the infamous front man of Jimmy and the Slut Puppies, dead in a fishy-smelling scuba accident, might be the stiff of Jack s dreams if only he can figure out what happened.Standing in the way are (among others) his ambitious young editor, who hasn t yet fired anyone but plans to break her cherry on Jack; the rock star s pop-singer widow, who s using the occasion of her husband s death to re-launch her own career; and the soulless, profit-hungry owner of the newspaper, whom Jack once publicly humiliated at a stockholders meeting.With clues from the dead rock singer s music, Jack ultimately unravels Jimmy Stoma s strange fate in a hilariously hard-won triumph for muckraking journalism, and for the death-obsessed obituary writer himself. Always be halfway prepared is Jack Tagger s motto and it s more than enough to guarantee a wickedly funny, brilliantly entertaining novel from Carl Hiaasen.
This fast paced and intricately plotted crime novel mixes in murder and mayhem with a good dose of laugh out loud humor. Like most of Carl Hiaasen's novels, it is set in South Florida and captures not only that areas' glamour, but also ithe dark underside of the music business and club scene. The story line involves the usual knight-errand protagonist but in the unusual guise of a journalist forced to write only obituaries for a small local newspaper due to his having embarrassed the new, greedy corporate owners at a stock-holders meeting. The discription of the new "trust fund baby" owner and his soul stealing efforts to rid the paper of its former hard news, muck raking writers seems like a thinly veiled portrait of Ruppert Murdoch and sons, but accurately recreates the compromises and pressures of a modern newsroom. Hiaasen's love of music and intelligent independent women is adeptly woven into a clever murder mystery where motive is the most elusive element. I highly recommend this book for some intriguing and highly entertaining summer reading.
