Sometimes is it a very good thing that someone had the presence of mind to invent this thing called the Bank Holiday. It can be used for so many useful things: traveling, exploring local parks, shopping (but usually not for as long as one would like), drinking, eating, sleeping in late and, of course... reading. Again it is Sunday and once again I find myself sitting at my little table behind my laptop. This time with the Kinks blasting their greatest hits into the living room as another one has bitten the dust!
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Double Whammy - Carl Hiaasen
I have read a fair few detectives but I do not think I have ever read one with as strange a topic: cheating in Bass fishing tournaments. I have to admit that I do not pretend to understand why grown men (and perhaps some women too?) would want to spend a miserable (or sunny) Sunday afternoon sitting on the banks of lakes and rivers waiting to catch something that you could go and buy in the supermarket already filleted and ready to cook. I do not quite see the appeal of waiting for something to bite and then throwing it back. Be that as it may.... the proposition of a detective story set in the fishing world seemed an interesting one.
Unfortunately for Mr Hiaasen my interest in the book floundered quite quickly. The main character we meet, RJ Decker, does not really hold a lot of interest for me. He is not a "commanding" presence as a detective or character. He is presented with a back story of having been a good newspaper photographer with a short fuse who, in a moment of madness clobbered some guy and ended up going to jail for it. He then ends up working for insurance companies trying to bust people committing insurance fraud. Decker is emotionally deadened by all that he has seen and he never wants to go back looking at people just through the lens of a camera. As such this idea works for me.. someone who is so shocked by the violence he has to shoot that it stays with him. However, this emotional turmoil is not really expanded upon or explored too much as Hiaasen has to get on with the story.
Naturally, Decker has an ex wife he still has feelings for and he has a cop friend in the force who still helps him out every now and then. He also has an semi nasty employer that wants him to do his job and annoys him with phone calls every now and again. Decker lives in a trailer park as (naturally) he wants to be away form the big bad world he has seen through the lens of his camera. He is presented as a guy with not too many ties to this world. He gets hired by Gault to find out how certain individuals are able to rig fishing competitions and to get photographic evidence of this. Gault is presented as the classic "one sandwich short of a picnic" baddo. It is no real surprise that he ends up turning on Decker and is the one who is behind most of the killing in the book. Trust me... revealing this to you now will not reduce the "enjoyment" of the book. The whole thing is set up so clearly from the start that after meeting Gault once you know there is more to him than Hiaasen lets on at first. This is one of my biggest gripes with the book.. nothing in it is that surprising. Not one of the good guys you meet are who they seem at first. The nutter is not that much of a nutter but a former governor, the state trooper is not the bad ass you think but a good friend of the former governor and thus a friend to Decker, the bait girlfriend (sister of Gault) seems to play along at first but turns later (blood and water and all that I guess). After meeting a few of the characters you kind of wait for the other shoe to drop to find out who they really are or what they are really here for. Not a lot really. the book could have done without half the characters in it.
So, back to the story line: fish fraud is being committed and the bad guys must be stopped. Decker is hired and goes off to some backwater town to trace the culprits. Naturally Decker finds an old friend of his working at the local newspaper at the hub of the fishy behaviour and he uses him to get some local info on the local fishing boys. His friend Ott then takes it upon himself to do a bit of snooping and ends up dead. Decker meets a weirdo called Skink who likes to eat road kill and who also happened to end up helping him solve the case. As you would expect there are some more bodies on the way to the end of the story and at one point Decker is even in the frame for the murder of a few of them. There is a second smaller strand of the story that deals with the guy who runs some kind of religious TV network and I believe Mr Hiaasen wants us to understand the true nature of these kinds of power hungry God wielding hypocrites and I have to say Mr Hiaasen... point taken. The Reverend Weeb is probably the only bad guy who is not what he pretends to be. To the outside world he is a God fearing man wanting to build the perfect environment for his flock but behind the scenes he is a hedonistic devil incarnate. Weeb is a man with a mission but as Mr Hiaasen kindly explains his background you realise that there will be no chance of him succeeding in anything he does so that ends that threat. Fortunately for the reader the rest of the bad guys are all stupid and bad and there are plenty of bodies before the last page is turned and the ways they die just get more and more over the top as the story goes on. The first guy "just" gets beaten to death and dropped of a boat but I kind of feel sorry for the last guy to die. He gets his head blown up by a small camera loaded with plastic explosives which is a bit unnecessary as he already had the head of a dead dog hanging off his arm (trust me, it's a hoot how it got there!). As if the gangrene toxins spreading through his body was not already doing a good job of killing him, he had to be blown up too. Actually Poochy was probably one of the most gripping things in the story if I'm honest.
So.... any good?? Not really.
It reads kind of fast, Decker is okay as a character, as are some of the other characters (there is just not that much content to them). The conversations read okay, not too stilted. The action moves along swiftly although it is never pumping with adrenaline or edge of your seat stuff. It has promise in some parts but as a whole it is just not gripping or entertaining enough. There is no ominous threat that needs to be dealt with - who really cares about rich boys fiddling one another out of some prize money none of them need or another fishing boat. There is no truly bad guy that needs to be caught - Gault is a bad guy but he is presented almost as a parody of himself and not as someone who is out to destroy everyone. The rest of characters are just not that interesting, not even Skink, the former governor. He would have been more interesting as a governor and ally for Decker but Hiaasen made him the weirdo. All the characters get a little back story that is supposed to make you relate to them more and understand them better but the attempt feels contrived and forced as if Hiaasen wants you to like the good guys. There are some funny scenes with Decker and Skink but overall the book is a bit of a let down.
Title: Double Whammy
Author: Carl Hiaasen
442 pages
Pan Books
ISBN nr 0-330-30987-0
Books to be read: 70
PS: I am also eagerly awaiting the arrival of my two new CDs - one by Caro Emerald and the other by Aloe Blacc. Both are a special treat to myself to celebrate my promotion to Project Manager.
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