Cover image of "Stormy Weather," a novel about scam artists and a hurricane

Welcome to the wild and wacky world of Carl Hiaasen. If anyone is better qualified to chronicle the madness unfolding in the state of Florida, I can’t think of who that might be. Hiaasen portrays the state as wracked by superstorms, shredded by misbegotten and unregulated development, and overrun with scam artists, drug traffickers, misguided tourists, and predatory invasive species both human and non. Of course, it’s all true, but Hiaasen has a lot of fun with it, and you will, too. It’s all out there in black and white in the pages of Stormy Weather, one of his earlier takedowns of the Sunshine State, with its wall-to-wall corruption.

A book you’ll like only if you like to laugh

Pick up any of Hiaasen’s 17 satirical adult novels, and you’ll find a sprawling cast of befuddled and self-seeking characters. The most prominent among them in Stormy Weather are a feral former Governor who lives on roadkill and insects in the swamps and a passel of assorted criminals. There’s a crooked housing inspector and the mobile home salesman who depends on him to forgive his failure to tie down the trailers he sells before an approaching hurricane. And a young woman obsessed with bagging a young Kennedy whom she can then accuse of rape. But that’s not all.

You’ll also meet a young tourist couple on a short-lived honeymoon. A Florida State Police officer who protects that deranged former governor from capture. Oh, and there’s also an indolent young man who inherits his late, drug-smuggling uncle’s menagerie of reptiles and endangered wildlife. Naturally, the animals escape into the wilds of Miami when a massive hurricane strikes. You’ll definitely consider your money well spent on this book if you like to laugh.

Stormy Weather (Skink #3 of 7) by Carl Hiaasen (1995) 450 pages ★★★★★

Aerial photo of a South Florida trailer park like the one in this novel about scam artists and a hurricane
A large trailer park in South Florida. If you imagine instead a strip of a half-dozen or a dozen mobile homes, this photo probably represents something closer to the place at the center of this hilarious novel. Image: The Real Deal

What happens in this book? Read it and laugh.

It’s impossible to summarize Stormy Weather, or any of Carl Hiaasen’s other novels, without explaining how all these disparate characters—and so many others!—come together in the story. It is, of course, silly to the core. But there’s a lot of hilarity between the covers of this book. If you enjoy satire, you’ll love Stormy Weather.

About the author

Photo of Carl Hiaasen, author of this novel about scam artists and a hurricane
Carl Hiaasen. Image: Quinn Hiaasen – author’s website

Carl Hiaasen was born in 1953 in Fort Lauderdale and, except for a brief stint as a student at Emory University in Atlanta, has lived in Florida all his life. He has been writing satirical and often hilarious novels for adults and young people and an occasional nonfiction book since 1986. His work focuses on environmentalism and political corruption, and he has won numerous awards. He was also a columnist for the Miami Herald from 1985 until he retired in 2021. Hiaasen, a champion fly fisherman, is of Norwegian and Irish ancestry.

I’ve reviewed three other novels in Hiaasen’s Skink series:

I’ve also reviewed seven other Hiaasen novels:

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