Only in Miami

by Carlos Diaz

For a few months I have been trying to read a Carl Hiaasen novel for the first time. Two things led me to be interested in Hiaasen’s novels: His columns and the setting where his stories play out. I have been an admirer of Mr. Hiaasen’s Sunday columns in The Miami Herald for quite some time. I could not resist to read a novel based in Miami by a writer who says Florida is a character in his novels. Last Sunday, I finally found time to start reading one of the novels. I chose the latest adult one he has published, Star Island. The most remarkable thing about this work is its characters.

The novel begins with twenty-two-year-old Cherry Pye–a not very talented pop star who has been in the spotlight since she was fourteen–being carried out of a hotel in Miami Beach after swallowing “an unwise mix of vodka, Red Bull, hydrocodone, birdseed and stool softener” or what Cherry’s mom calls the effects of “gastritis.” Due to the constant “flare-ups of her gastritis,” Cherry’s parents–mom has an affair with a tennis instructor and dad has a relationship with a Scandinavian couple–, her promoter–who enjoys sex with underage girls–, and PR team–twin sisters who did not look alike until they paid a Brazilian doctor to make them look the same–decided to hire a stunt double. This decoy, Ann DeLusia–Cherry’s antithesis–is not thrilled with the job or the star she is supposed to impersonate but does it because the pay is good. Apart from her addiction to alcohol and narcotics, Cherry also has an almost insatiable libido. Her bodyguards usually end up as her accomplices after she performs some marvelous sex act– she is better in bed than on stage. Cherry is very disappointed when her mom fires the bodyguard–whom she loved because of his penis piercing. Cherry’s promoter hires a new bodyguard nicknamed Chemo. Chemo is a seven foot tall, ex-convict who sold real estate during the bubble years–who didn’t in Florida–and has a battery powered weed whacker as prosthesis for an arm he lost. In one of her adventures Cherry welcomes a paparazzo to the mile high club. The paparazzo, known as Bang Abbott, besides from a horrible smell also has a Pulitzer Prize in photography. The Prize, of course, was won under questionable circumstances. Abbott feels played by Cherry Pye and decides to kidnap the artist. He mistakenly takes Cherry’s double hostage. What Abbott does not know is that Ann made a new friend in her recent trip to the Florida Keys. Skink is Ann’s friend and self-appointed protector. He also was, briefly, governor of Florida, but now lives in the mangroves among alligators and poison-wood. His hobbies include placing sea urchins inside a real estate developer’s underwear.

What could go wrong with this throng of characters?