Carl Hiaasen ( editor ) - Naked Came the Manatee: A Novel

Saturday night, Coconut Grove.

It was the usual scene: thousands of people, not one of whom normal people would call normal.

There were the European tourists, getting off their big fume-belching buses, wearing their new jeans and their Hard Rock Cafe T-shirts, which they bought when their charter bus stopped in Orlando. They moved in chattering clots, following their flag-waving tour directors, lining up outside Planet Hollywood, checking out the wall where famous movie stars had made impressions of their hands in the cement squares, taking videos of each other putting their palms in the same exact spot where Bruce Willis once put his palm.

Eventually they'd be admitted, past the velvet ropes, get an actual table, order an actual cheeseburger. This, truly, was America: eating cheeseburgers with other European tourists.

-- Naked Came the Manatee, from the chapter "Booger" by Dave Barry.

It's been said -- famously or infamously -- that South Florida is one of the loopiest regions in the United States. Whether the area makes national headlines for elections where dead people vote, its Banana Republic-like politics where a candidate's anti-Castro credentials are apparently more important than his or her views on the local economy, or its colorful citizenry (Miami-Dade has its share of too-bizarre-to-be-true denizens, such as a math teacher who took bribes from his students for better grades, or the town mayor who was convicted of hiring a hit man to off her husband). We have roaches the size of buses (or so it seems) and hordes of mosquitoes that swarm around in search of blood like greedy developers looking for ways to grab more Everglades land on which to build cookie-cutter housing complexes with such names as Coral Lakes or Palm Bay.

Naturally, this makes the region the perfect target -- er, setting -- for many irreverent novels; Carl Hiaasen, a Miami Herald columnist, has made a tidy profit turning his outrage and dismay at the shenanigans of South Florida's political and business leaders into wry satirical novels (Skinny Dip, Strip Tease) that are both funny and oh-so-true.

Hiaasen is one of 13 Florida authors who, a decade ago, were asked to contribute a chapter each to the now defunct Tropic, the Herald's Sunday magazine. Each author, ranging from humor columnist Dave Barry to crime novelist Edna Buchanan, brings his or her distinctive style to the challenging enterprise, yet has to be in harmony with the others lest the effect of "too many cooks stirring the pot" ruins Naked Came the Manatee.

Naked Came the Manatee's loopy storyline revolves around -- ick -- a severed head found in a metal container in Biscayne Bay and the various innocent and nefarious characters whose lives will be upended -- or ended -- as it becomes the McGuffin everyone -- from the overweight gangster Big Joey G, ace reporter Britt Montero, Cuban-American businessman (and aspiring future president of Cuba) Juan Carlos Reyes, and lawyer Jake Lassiter -- is either seeking or wanting to get rid of. There's also a 102-year-old environmentalist based on Marjory Stoneman Douglas, a wryly humorous and wise woman with a penchant for skinny dipping with a manatee named Booger.

It's all very strange and twisted, but despite some uneven spots -- after all, there are 13 different writers involved -- Naked Came the Manatee is delightfully witty. South Floridians, of course, will recognize many of the locales described in its 201-page narrative, while out-of-town readers will probably read this fast-paced and lighthearted satire and either make plans to visit this somewhat exotic region or simply feel a wave of relief that their hometowns are more normal.

Naked Came the Manatee: Contributing Authors/Chapter List

Dave Barry: "Booger"

Les Stanford: "The Big Wet Sleep"

Paul Levine: "Biscayne Blues"

Edna Buchanan: "The L.A. Connection"

James W. Hall: "The Old Woman and the Sea"

Carolina Hospital: "Heading to Havana"

Evelyn Mayerson: "The Lock & Key"

Tananarive Due: "Strange Fish"

Brian Antoni: "South Beach Serenade"

Vicki Hendricks: "Dance of the Manatee"

John Dufresne: "Where Are You Dying Tonight?"

Elmore Leonard: "The Odyssey"

Carl Hiaasen: "The Law of the Jungle"