Star Island by Carl Hiaasen ****

Do you enjoy those oddball news stories about crazy people in Florida? Well, whatever you've heard is no match for the zany mysteries/comedies by Carl Hiaasen. Star Island is a wild romp about a talentless, promiscuous, hard-partying pop star who her parents named Cherry Pye. Other players include a bodyguard with a hand replaced by a weed wacker (see Malcolm McDowell in Tank Girl), a set of twin PR agents (surgically enhanced to appear identical), and a actor hired to stand-in for Cherry Pye when she is otherwise incapacitated.

This book is advertised as Skink number 6. Skink being

... once the governor of Florida ... who has happier being an odd historical footnote ... From the air, Skink was practically invisible, his shorn head as brown and featureless as a floating coconut.

It was unwise to draw the attention of the ex-governor. A real estate developer who had targeted an ecologically important piece of land found himself with a sea urchin strapped between his legs. The result was

Jackie sagged into a leather recliner and spread his spindly legs to ease the pressure. The obstetrical pose was all the more apt because his grotesquely engorged nut sack resembled nothing so much as the slimy, purple-veined crown of an emerging newborn.

This is a hilarious, and just slightly surrealistic, read. A perfect vacation book for long plane ride or a short cruise, preferably to or from or in the tropics.