There’s a thin line between satire and reality in Carl Hiaasen’s ‘Fever Beach’
Several years ago, my dad and stepmom were scammed by a moving company based in Boynton Beach, Florida. They were relocating from Arkansas to Mississippi when the company hijacked their entire household of belongings and hauled it — not to their new home, but to Chicago, where everything was picked through, stolen from and held for ransom.
After exhausting official channels and receiving shrugs from the mayor, police and city council of Boynton Beach, as well as a resigned sigh from someone in the Attorney General’s office in Tallahassee who told me, “Sir, South Florida is nothing but criminals,” I took a page from Carl Hiaasen.
I tracked down the owner of the moving company, found his highly religious mother and called her. I calmly laid out the crimes her son had committed and suggested she probably wouldn’t see him in heaven. That call worked. The moving company drove what was left of my father’s things back overnight and begged me never to contact them again. It was absurd, criminal and somehow darkly funny — a true Florida story. And it’s exactly the kind of grotesque chaos Hiaasen has made a career chronicling.
I begin with that anecdote to point out how real the world of Carl Hiaasen is and how maddening it is to be the victim of a crime that originates in South Florida. Unfortunately, the ridiculous criminals of Dade, Palm and Broward counties no longer stick to their tropical environs. They have slowly taken over the culture of our nation. Hiaasen’s latest novel, “Fever Beach,” might be his most unsettling yet — not because it’s more bizarre than his previous work, but because it no longer feels like satire. The world has caught up to him.
Like many of Hiaasen’s novels, “Fever Beach” centers on an ensemble of grotesquely Floridian characters: criminals, grifters, ecoterrorists, corrupt politicians, clueless extremists and the occasional semi-decent person just trying to survive.
The book opens with Dale Figgo, a washed-up Proud Boy reject who becomes the founder of a masturbatory white nationalist group called “Strokers for Liberty.” (Yes, Hiaasen does real reporting: The actual Proud Boys forbid masturbation.) Figgo is so stupid he mistakes a Confederate statue for Union General Ulysses S. Grant and smears feces on it during the Capitol insurrection. He’s the kind of character who, 10 years ago, would’ve been dismissed as too cartoonish to be plausible. Today, he reads like your cousin’s Facebook friend.
The story takes off when Figgo picks up a hitchhiker, setting in motion a series of chaotic collisions involving dark money, white supremacy, ecological destruction and right-wing extremism. Enter Twilly Spree — a character Hiaasen fans may recognize from “Sick Puppy.” A trust fund vigilante who fights for Florida’s wildlife with the zeal of a superhero, Spree destroys construction equipment and doles out justice in ways that straddle the line between heroic and deranged. Alongside Spree is Viva Morales, a recently divorced woman working at the shady Mink Foundation while renting a room in Figgo’s apartment. Together, they unravel a conspiracy involving billionaires Claude and Electra Mink, and Clure Boyette, a vile politician.
What sets “Fever Beach” apart from Hiaasen’s earlier novels is its willingness to engage directly with the political and cultural crises of our time. Trumpism, the coronavirus, Jan. 6, QAnon, antisemitism, racism and the explosion of white nationalism are not just background noise — they are the world in which these characters live. What used to be exaggeration now feels like documentation.
For decades, Hiaasen has been dismissed by some critics as “just funny” — a crime, frankly, that says more about how we devalue humor than about the quality of his work. But laughter can be a scalpel and Hiaasen wields it with precision. “Fever Beach” is laugh-out-loud funny in places, but the satire carries real weight.
Hiaasen exposes how antisemitism, homophobia and conspiracy theories fester in plain sight. He shows how few people are willing to confront a culture where lunatics cry “deepfake!” to excuse their actions, or where billionaires use philanthropy to cover up fascist agendas. Hiaasen’s humor is no longer about poking fun at the margins — it’s about shining a searing spotlight on what our society has become.
On a technical level, “Fever Beach” is masterfully written. Hiaasen employs a third-person omniscient narrator, but his voice shifts deftly with each character. Whether we’re inside the head of the rage-fueled Spree, the cluelessly hateful Figgo or the calculating and botoxed Electra Mink, the tone and descriptive detail always serve character first, with Hiaasen’s trademark bite just under the surface. It’s a rare feat: Every character is absurd, but never flat.
And while Skink — the legendary ex-governor-turned-wildman who’s appeared in many Hiaasen novels — doesn’t show up in “Fever Beach,” Spree takes on a similar role. There’s a wistfulness to him. You get the sense that Hiaasen envies his abandon, and maybe the author wishes he could live like an ecoterrorist. Spree fights for the Everglades with the kind of righteous, reckless fervor we wish more real people had. He’s not just a comic device — he’s a fantasy of resistance in a world too weary or complicit to fight back.
What’s most remarkable is how Hiaasen foresaw all of this. His earlier books warned us, cloaked in humor, of what South Florida — and by extension, America — was becoming. “Fever Beach” feels like the culmination of that prophecy. The lunacy of “Florida Man” is no longer a sideshow. It’s the main act. America is being run by Florida men and women now.
So yes, you’ll laugh at “Fever Beach.” But by the end, your laughter might catch in your throat. Because once you become part of a Florida story, it stops being funny. Just ask my dad.
Fiction
“Fever Beach”
by Carl Hiaasen
Knopf
384 pages, $30
