{"product_id":"skinny-dip-isbn-9781101973035","title":"Skinny Dip","description":"\u003cb\u003eNATIONAL BESTSELLER • Take a hilarious ride through the warped politics and mayhem of the human environment, and the human heart, in this \"screwball delight so full of bright, deft, beautifully honed humor.... You'd follow [Hiaasen] anywhere.\" —\u003ci\u003eThe New York Times \u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003eChaz Perrone might be the only marine scientist in the world who doesn’t know which way the Gulf Stream runs. He might also be the only one who went into biology just to make a killing, and now he’s found a way–doctoring water samples so that a ruthless agribusiness tycoon can continue illegally dumping fertilizer into the endangered Everglades. When Chaz suspects that his wife, Joey, has figured out his scam, he pushes her overboard from a cruise liner into the night-dark Atlantic. Unfortunately for Chaz, his wife doesn’t die in the fall. \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eClinging blindly to a bale of Jamaican pot, Joey Perrone is plucked from the ocean by former cop and current loner Mick Stranahan. Instead of rushing to the police and reporting her husband’s crime, Joey decides to stay dead and (with Mick’s help) screw with Chaz until he screws himself. \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e As Joey haunts and taunts her homicidal husband, as Chaz’s cold-blooded cohorts in pollution grow uneasy about his ineptitude and increasingly erratic behavior, as Mick Stranahan discovers that six failed marriages and years of island solitude haven’t killed the reckless romantic in him, we’re taken on a full-throttle, pure Hiaasen ride.\"A screwball delight so full of bright, deft, beautifully honed humor.... You'd follow [Hiaasen] anywhere.\" \u003ci\u003e—The New York Times\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"A whopping cannonball splash of fun.... Hooray for Hiaasen’s world.\" \u003ci\u003e—\u003ci\u003eLos Angeles Times\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e“\u003c\/i\u003eBarking mad.... Here Hiaasen is at his best.\u003ci\u003e\" —The Baltimore Sun\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e\"It doesn’t do Carl Hiaasen justice to call him Florida’s funniest state product.... Hiaasen is something bigger: a superb national satirist [and] a great American writer.\u003ci\u003e\" —\u003ci\u003eEntertainment Weekly\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e\"Hilarious.... Like the characters, the plot is a hoot, but the real laughs are in Hiaasen's telling.\"\u003ci\u003e\u003ci\u003e —\u003ci\u003ePeople\u003c\/i\u003e (Critics' Choice)\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e\"Confident and determinedly wacky.... Skinny Dip thrives when Hiaasen and his heroes let their prankster spirits run amok.... Riotous fun.\"\u003ci\u003e \u003ci\u003e—\u003ci\u003eA.V. Club\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \"Bitingly satirical, sublimely zany, and deeply satisfying.\"\u003ci\u003e\u003ci\u003e —\u003ci\u003eKirkus Reviews\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \"Hiaasen's signature mix of hilariously over-the-top villains, lovable innocents, and righteous indignation at what mankind has done to his beloved Florida wilderness is all present in riotous abundance.... Hiaasen's books are so enjoyable it's always a sad moment when they end.\"\u003ci\u003e\u003ci\u003e —\u003ci\u003ePublishers Weekly\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e\"Another delirious romp through the swamps of South Florida from the irrepressible Carl Hiaasen.... A corker, chock-full of belly laughs and blistering truths.\"\u003ci\u003e\u003ci\u003e —\u003ci\u003eBooklist\u003c\/i\u003e (starred review)\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cb\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/b\u003eCarl Hiaasen was born and raised in Florida. He is the author of ten previous novels,  including \u003ci\u003eSick Puppy, Lucky You,\u003c\/i\u003e \u003ci\u003eStormy Weather, Basket Case\u003c\/i\u003e, and, for young readers,  \u003ci\u003eHoot\u003c\/i\u003e. He also writes a regular column for the \u003ci\u003eMiami Herald\u003c\/i\u003e.One\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e At the stroke of eleven on a cool April night, a woman named Joey Perrone went  overboard from a luxury deck of the cruise liner M.V. Sun Duchess. Plunging toward  the dark Atlantic, Joey was too dumbfounded to panic.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e I married an asshole, she  thought, knifing headfirst into the waves.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e The impact tore off her silk skirt, blouse,  panties, wristwatch and sandals, but Joey remained conscious and alert. Of course  she did. She had been co-captain of her college swim team, a biographical nugget  that her husband obviously had forgotten.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e Bobbing in its fizzy wake, Joey watched  the gaily lit Sun Duchess continue steaming away at twenty nautical miles per hour.  Evidently only one of the other 2,049 passengers was aware of what had happened,  and he wasn’t telling anybody.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e Bastard, Joey thought.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e She noticed that her bra  was down around her waist, and she wriggled free of it. To the west, under a canopy  of soft amber light, the coast of Florida was visible. Joey began to swim.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e The water  of the Gulf Stream was slightly warmer than the air, but a brisk northeasterly wind  had kicked up a messy and uncomfortable chop. Joey paced herself. To keep her mind  off sharks, she replayed the noteworthy events of the week-long cruise, which had  begun almost as unpromisingly as it had ended.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e The Sun Duchess had departed Port  Everglades three hours late because a raccoon had turned up berserk in the pastry  kitchen. One of the chefs had wrestled the frothing critter into a sixty-gallon tin  of guava custard before it had shredded the man’s jowls and humped snarling to the  depths of the ship. A capture team from Broward Animal Control had arrived, along  with health inspectors and paramedics. Evacuated passengers were appeased with rum  drinks and canapés.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e Later, while reboarding, Joey had passed the Animal Control  officers trudging empty-handed down the gangplank.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e “I bet they couldn’t catch it,”  she’d whispered to her husband. Despite the inconvenience caused by the raccoon,  she’d found herself rooting for the addled little varmint.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e “Rabies,” her husband  had said knowingly. “Damn thing lays a claw on me, I’ll own this frigging cruise  line.”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e “Oh, please, Chaz.”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e “From then on, you can call me Onassis. Think I’m kidding?” \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e The Sun Duchess was 855 feet long and weighed a shade more than seventy thousand  tons. Joey had learned this from a brochure she’d found in their stateroom. The itinerary  included Puerto Rico, Nassau and a private Bahamian island that the cruise lines  had purchased (rumor had it) from the widow of a dismembered heroin trafficker. The  last port of call before the ship returned to Fort Lauderdale was to be Key West.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e Chaz had selected the cruise himself, claiming it was a present for their wedding  anniversary. The first evening he’d spent on the fantail, slicing golf balls into  the ocean. Initially Joey had been annoyed that the Sun Duchess would offer a driving  range, much less a fake rock-climbing wall and squash courts. She and Chaz could  have stayed in Boca and done all that.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e No less preposterous was the ship’s tanning  parlor, which received heavy traffic whenever the skies turned overcast. The cruise  company wanted every passenger to return home with either a bronze glow or a crimson  burn, proof of their seven days in the tropics.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e As it turned out, Joey wound up  scaling the rock wall and tak- ing full advantage of the other amenities, even the  two-lane bowling alley. The alternative was to eat and drink herself sick, gluttony  being the principal recreation aboard cruise liners. The Sun Duchess was renowned  for its twenty-four-hour surf-and-turf buffets, and that’s how Joey’s husband had  spent the hours between ports.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e Pig, she thought, submerging to shed a clot of seaweed  that had wrapped around her neck like a sodden yule garland.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e Each day’s sunrise  had brought a glistening new harbor, yet the towns and straw markets were drearily  similar, as if designed and operated by a franchise. Joey had earnestly tried to  be charmed by the native wares, though many appeared to have been crafted in Singapore  or South Korea. And what would one do with a helmet conch clumsily retouched with  nail polish? Or a coconut husk bearing a hand-painted likeness of Prince Harry?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e So grinding was the role of tourist that Joey had found herself looking forward to  visiting the ship’s “unspoiled private island,” as it had been touted in the brochure.  Yet that, too, proved dispiriting. The cruise line had mendaciously renamed the place  Rapture Key while making only a minimal effort at restoration. Roosters, goats and  feral hogs were the predominant fauna, having outlasted the smuggler who had been  raising them for banquet fare. The island’s sugar-dough flats were pocked with hulks  of sunken drug planes, and the only shells to be found along the tree-shorn beach  were of the .45-caliber variety.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e “I’m gonna rent a Jet Ski,” Chaz had cheerily decreed.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e “I’ll try to find some shade,” Joey had said, “and finish my book.”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e The distance  between them remained wide and unexplored. By the time the Sun Duchess had reached  Key West, Joey and Chaz were spending only about one waking hour a day together,  an interval usually devoted to either sex or an argument. It was pretty much the  same schedule they kept at home.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e So much for the romantic latitudes, Joey had thought,  wishing she felt sadder than she did.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e When her husband had scampered off to “check  out the action” at Mallory Square, she briefly considered seducing one of the cabin  attendants, a fine Peruvian brute named Tico. Ultimately Joey had lost the urge,  dismissing the crestfallen young fellow with a peck on the chin and a fifty-dollar  tip. She didn’t feel strongly enough about Chaz to cheat on him even out of spite,  although she suspected he’d cheated on her often (and quite possibly during the cruise).\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e Upon returning to the Sun Duchess, Chaz had been as chatty as a cockatoo on PCP.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e “See all those clouds? It’s about to rain,” he’d proclaimed with a peculiar note  of elation.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e “I guess that means no golf tonight,” Joey had said.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e “Hey, I counted  twenty-six T-shirt shops on Duval Street. No wonder Hemingway blew his brains out.” \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e “That wasn’t here,” Joey had informed him. “That was in Idaho.”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e “How about some  chow? I could eat a whale.”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e At dinner Chaz had kept refilling Joey’s wineglass,  over her protests. Now she understood why.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e She felt it, too, that dehydrated alcohol  fatigue. She’d been kicking hard up the crests of the waves and then breast-stroking  down the troughs, but now she was losing both her rhythm and stamina. This wasn’t  the heated Olympic pool at UCLA; it was the goddamn Atlantic Ocean. Joey scrunched  her eyelids to dull the saltwater burn.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e I had a feeling he didn’t love me anymore,  she thought, but this is ridiculous.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e Chaz Perrone listened for a splash but  heard nothing except the deep lulling rumble of the ship’s engines. Head cocked slightly,  he stood at the rail as solitary and motionless as a heron.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e He hadn’t planned to  toss her here. He had hoped to do it earlier in the voyage, somewhere between Nassau  and San Juan, with the expectation that the currents would carry her body into Cuban  waters, safely out of U.S. jurisdiction.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e If the bull sharks didn’t find her first.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e Unfortunately, the weather had been splendid during that early  leg of the cruise,  and every night the outside decks were crowded  with moony-eyed couples. Chaz’s scheme  required seclusion and he’d nearly abandoned hope, when the rain arrived, three hours  after leaving Key West. It was only a drizzle, but Chaz knew it would drive the tourists  indoors, stampeding for the lobster salad and electronic poker machines.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e The second  crucial element of his plot was surprise, Joey being a physically well-tuned woman  and Chaz himself being somewhat softer and out of shape. Before luring her toward  the stern of the Sun Duchess under the ruse of a starlit stroll, he’d made certain  that his wife had consumed plenty of red wine; four and a half glasses, by his count.  Two was usually enough to make her drowsy.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e “Chaz, it’s sprinkling,” she had observed  as they approached the rail.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e Naturally she’d been puzzled, knowing how her husband  despised getting wet. The man owned no less than seven umbrellas.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e Pretending not  to hear her, he had guided Joey forward by the elbow. “My stomach’s a disaster. I  think it’s time they retired that seviche, don’t you?”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e “Let’s go back inside,” Joey  had suggested.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e From a pocket of his blue blazer Chaz had surreptitiously removed  the key to their stateroom and let it fall to the polished planks at his feet. “Oops.” \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e “Chaz, it’s getting chilly out here.”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e “I think I dropped our key,” he’d said,  stooping to find it. Or so Joey had assumed.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e He could only guess what had shot through  his wife’s mind when she’d felt him grab her ankles. He’s gotta be kidding, is what  she’d probably thought.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e The act itself was a rudimentary exercise in leverage, really,  flipping her backward over the rail. It had happened so fast, she hadn’t made a peep.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e As for the splash, Chaz would have preferred to hear it; a soft punctuation to the  marriage and the crime. Then again, it was a long way down to the water.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e He allowed  himself a brief glance, but saw only whitecaps and foam in the roiling reflection  of the ship’s lights. The Sun Duchess kept moving, which was a relief. No Klaxons  sounded.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e Chaz picked up the key and hurried to the stateroom, bolting the door behind  him. After hanging up his blazer, he opened another bottle of wine, poured some into  two glasses and drank half of each.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e Joey’s suitcase lay open for re-packing, and  Chaz moved it from the bed to the floor. He splayed his own travel bag and went foraging  for an antacid. Beneath a stack of neatly folded boxers—Joey was a champion packer,  he had to admit—Chaz came upon a box wrapped in tartan-style gift paper with green  ribbon.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e Inside the box was a gorgeous set of leather golf-club covers that were  embossed with his initials, C.R.P. There was also a card: “Happy 2nd Anniversary!  Love always, Joey.”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e Admiring the silken calfskin sheaths, Chaz felt a knot of remorse  in his gut. It passed momentarily, like acid reflux.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e His wife had class, no doubt  about it. If only she hadn’t been so damn . . . observant.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e In exactly six hours  he would report her missing.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e Chaz stripped to his underwear and lobbed his clothes  in a corner. Packed inside his carry-on was a paperback edition of Madame Bovary,  which he opened randomly and placed for effect on the nightstand by Joey’s side of  the bed.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e Then Charles Regis Perrone set his alarm clock, laid his head on the pillow  and went to sleep.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e The Gulf Stream carried Joey northward at almost four knots.  She knew she’d have to swim harder if she didn’t want to end up bloated and rotting  on some sandbar in North Carolina.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e But, Lord, she was tired.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e Had to be the wine.  Chaz knew she wasn’t much of a drinker, and obviously he’d planned it all in advance.  Probably hoped that the fall from the ship would break her legs or knock her unconscious,  and if it didn’t, so what? She’d be miles from land in a pitching black ocean, and  scared shitless. Nobody would find her even if they went looking, and she’d drown  from exhaustion before daylight.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e That’s what Chaz probably figured.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e He hadn’t forgotten  about her glory days at UCLA, either, Joey realized. He knew she would start swimming,  if she somehow survived the fall. In fact, he was counting on her to swim; betting  that his stubborn and prideful wife would wear herself out when she should have tucked  into a floating position and conserved her strength until sunrise. At least then  she’d have a speck of a chance to be seen by a passing ship.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e Sometimes I wonder  about myself, Joey thought.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e Once a tanker passed so close that it blocked out the  moon. The ship’s silhouette was squat and dark and squared at both ends, like a high-rise  condo tipped on its side. Joey had hollered and waved, but there was no chance of  being heard above the clatter of the engines. The tanker pushed by, a russet wall  of noise and fumes, and Joey resumed swimming.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e Soon her legs started going numb,  a spidery tingle that began in her toes and crept upward. Muscle cramps wouldn’t  have surprised her, but the slow deadening did. She found herself laboring to keep  her face above the waves, and eventually she sensed that she’d stopped kicking altogether.  Toward the end she switched to the breaststroke, her legs trailing like pale broken  cables.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e We’ve only been married two years, she was thinking. What did I do to deserve  this?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e To take her mind off dying, Joey composed a mental list of the things that  Chaz didn’t like about her:\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e 1. She tended to overcook fowl, particularly chicken,  due to a lifelong fear of salmonella.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e 2. The facial moisturizing cream that she  applied at night smelled vaguely like insecticide.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e 3. Sometimes she dozed off during  hockey games, even the play-offs.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e 4. She refused to go down on him while he was  driving on Interstate 95, the Sunshine State Parkway or any surface road where the  posted speed limit exceeded fifty miles per hour.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e 5. She could whip him at tennis  whenever she felt like it.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e 6. She occasionally “misplaced” his favorite George Thorogood  CDs.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e 7. She declined to entertain the possibility of inviting his hairstylist over  for a threesome.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e 8. She belonged to a weekly book group.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e 9. She had more money  than he did.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e 10. She brushed with baking soda instead of toothpaste. . . .\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e Come  on, Joey thought.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e A guy doesn’t suddenly decide to murder his wife just because  she serves a chewy Cornish hen.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e Maybe it’s another woman, Joey thought. But then  why not just ask me for a divorce?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e She didn’t have the energy to sort it all out.  She’d married a worthless horndog and now he’d heaved her overboard on their anniversary  cruise and very soon she would drown and be devoured by sharks. Out here you had  the big boys: blacktips, lemons, hammerheads, tigers, makos and bulls. . . .\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e Please,  God, don’t let them eat me, Joey thought, until after I’ve died.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e The same warm tingle  was starting in her fingertips and soon, she knew, both arms would be as spent and  useless as her legs. Her lips had gone raw from the salt, her tongue was swollen  like a kielbasa and her eyelids were puffy and crusted. Still, the lights of Florida  beckoned like stardust whenever she reached the top of a wave.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e So Joey struggled  on, believing she still had a slender chance of survival. If she made it across the  Gulf Stream, she’d finally be able to rest; ball up and float until the sun came  up.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e She had momentarily forgotten about the sharks, when something heavy and rough-skinned  butted against her left breast. Thrashing and grunting, she beat at the thing with  both fists until the last of her strength was gone.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e Cavitating into unconsciousness,  she was subjected to a flash vision of Chaz in their stateroom aboard the Sun Duchess,  screwing a blond croupier before heading aft for one final bucket of balls.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e Prick,  Joey thought.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e Then the screen in her head went blank.","brand":"Vintage Crime\/Black Lizard","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":46301693247717,"sku":"NP9781101973035","price":19.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/1842\/7735\/files\/9781101973035.jpg?v=1767736725","url":"https:\/\/k12savings.com\/es\/products\/skinny-dip-isbn-9781101973035","provider":"K12savings","version":"1.0","type":"link"}