Squeeze Me, by Carl Hiaasen (Knopf, 336 pages)
This year has already seen the publication of one clever novel about the weirdness of the Sunshine State (Florida Man by Tom Cooper) and another that was a satirical takedown of the Trump presidency (Make Russia Great Again, by Christopher Buckley). Did we really need another that combines the finer points of the two?
Why, yes, it turns out that we did. Carl Hiaasen, a Miami Herald columnist who also finds time to crank out books every other year or so, offers balm for the post-election brain in Squeeze Me, a satirical novel that takes a well-worn premise (a political cover-up) and makes it glorious. The fact that it takes place in the second term of the presidency of a man the Secret Service code-named Mastodon should not be a deterrent to anyone except for die-hard Trump supporters born without a funny bone.
The novel begins with a Palm Beach socialite gone missing during a charity gala. Kiki Pew Fitzsimmons, whose wealth derived from marrying well twice, spent a lot of time at events benefiting second-tier diseases. (The current one, the White Ibis Ball, is a fundraiser for “a group globally committed to defeating Irritable Bowel Syndrome.) She has the sort of friends who object to her being listed missing through a “Silver Alert” for seniors. “Isn’t there a premium version for people like us? A Platinum Alert, something like that?”
Like many of her friends, Kiki Pew’s lineage can be described simply from whence her money came, i.e, “the antifreeze and real-estate Cornbrights”; and the “asbestos and textile Fitzsimmonses.” It is the sort of sly detail that makes Squeeze Me so delectable, savage and mocking yet never coming off as mean.
Kiki Pew, in addition to raising money for various causes, is an ardent supporter of a president who is “white, old and scornful of social reforms.” So are her friends.
“Often they were invited to dine at Casa Bellicosa, the Winter White House, while the President was in residence. He always made a point of waving from the buffet line or pastry table.”
Unfortunately, Kiki Pew, fascinating a character as she is, is with us only for a short time, as what happened to her sets up the cover-up that consumes the bulk of the novel. The unsettling manner of Kiki’s death was not good for business at the Lipid House, the place where she was last seen. But, rewritten, it could be very good for the president.
So a plot is hatched to blame her disappearance on a 25-year-old man from Honduras named Diego Beltran, who was arriving on the shore of Palm Beach via a smuggler’s boat the same night at the White Ibis Ball. And the president seizes the opportunity to suggest that her “brutal murder” was an act of “political terrorism” aimed at his administration. At her funeral at Cape Cod (“Winter residents of Palm Beach inevitably return north forever, either in caskets or urns”), she is eulogized by the vice president as a “martyred patriot.” A rallying cry is soon heard across the country: No more Diegos!
There is a monkey wrench in this plan, which is that there are people who do know what happened to Kiki Pew, most significantly, Angie Armstrong, who runs a nuisance-wildlife removal business. From alligators to coyotes to possums, Armstrong wrangles them all, releasing them in the wild when possible, burying them when it’s not. (Again, demonstrating Hiaasen’s wicked mastery of blending real life with comic fiction, in one memorable scene she snares a bobcat hunched on a Peloton bike like Grace in Boston.)
Baked into this Wag-the-Doggish story is an affair the first lady (code name Mockingbird) is having with a Secret Service agent.
Hiassen is a longtime writer of humor, but this book is an extraordinary accomplishment, given a personal tragedy. His brother, Rob Hiaasen, was one of the journalists killed by a gunman in a newsroom in Annapolis, Maryland, in 2018. The book is dedicated to him. It’s good that he has retained a sense of humor in the wake of loss like that. (Side note: A novel that Rob Hiaasen had worked on for years was published after his death. All proceeds from Float Plan go to a group called Everytown for Gun Safety.)
As the election fades into memory — if the election fades into memory — we may all be a little hung over, needing just a we fix of politics before returning to what resembles real life. Squeeze Me will get you over the hump. A
BOOK NOTES
You don’t have to have been a supporter of Barack Obama to be dazzled by the recent video clip of him effortlessly swishing a basketball through a hoop in Michigan while on a campaign stop with Joe Biden.
Say what you want about his politics, but the former president is cool. Which reminded me of a 2018 book, Shade: A Tale of Two Presidents, (Little, Brown & Co., 240 pages). The author is Pete Sousa, who was the official White House photographer for the entire eight years of Obama’s administration. His book juxtaposes photos of Obama with tweets, articles and headlines about and by Trump, and is predictably devastating but also smart and entertaining. It is definitely not for Trump fans, but if you know someone who still has an Obama/Biden bumper sticker on their car (I still come across them), this would be the perfect Christmas gift, paired with Obama’s new memoir.
Shade was released in paperback last fall, but this is the type of book better in hardcover.
What we all should be reading for the next few weeks are books about the Electoral College in anticipation of the events of Dec. 14, but who can stomach that?
Better: Humorist David Sedaris has a new collection of previously published work: The Best of Me (Little, Brown & Co., 400 pages).
But if you are bent on staying up with the news, these are two salient books that should be read together: Why We Need the Electoral College by Tara Ross (Gateway Editions, 320 pages) and Let the People Pick the President: The Case for Abolishing the Electoral College by Jesse Wegman (St. Martin’s Press, 304 pages).
Incredibly, there are two other books about the Electoral College that were published this year: Why Do We Still Have the Electoral College? by Alexander Keyssar (Harvard University Press, 544 pages); Presidential Elections and Majority Rule, the Rise, Demise, and Potential Restoration of the Jeffersonian Electoral College by Edward B. Foley (Oxford University Press, 256 pages).|
Don’t ever let anyone tell you traditional publishing is dead.
Featured photo: Squeeze Me