Squeeze Me: Carl Hiaasen & Karen Russell
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Best-selling author Carl Hiaasen discusses his new novel, Squeeze Me, with fellow Floridian (turned Portlander) and best-selling author Karen Russell, author of Sleep Donation and Swamplandia!
About Squeeze Me
A New York Times Bestseller
From the best-selling author of Skinny Dip and Razor Girl, a hilarious new novel of social and political intrigue, set against the glittering backdrop of Florida’s gold coast.
It’s the height of the Palm Beach charity ball season: for every disease or cause, there’s a reason for the local luminaries to eat (minimally), drink (maximally), and be seen. But when a prominent high-society dowager suddenly vanishes during a swank gala, and is later found dead in a concrete grave, panic and chaos erupt. Kiki Pew was notable not just for her wealth and her jewels—she was an ardent fan of the Winter White House resident just down the road, and a founding member of the POTUSSIES, a group of women dedicated to supporting their President. Never one to miss an opportunity to play to his base, the President immediately declares that Kiki was the victim of rampaging immigrant hordes. This, it turns out, is far from the truth.
The truth might just lie in the middle of the highway, where a bizarre discovery brings the First Lady’s motorcade to a grinding halt (followed by some grinding between the First Lady and a love-struck Secret Service agent). Enter Angie Armstrong, wildlife wrangler extraordinaire, who arrives at her own conclusions after she is summoned to the posh island to deal with a mysterious and impolite influx of huge, hungry pythons…
Carl Hiaasen can brighten even the darkest of days and Squeeze Me is pure, unadulterated Hiaasen. Irreverent, ingenious, and highly entertaining, Squeeze Me perfectly captures the absurdity of our times.
Praise for squeeze me
“If you could use some wild escapism right now, Hiaasen is your guy. In its themes and its wild imagination, Squeeze Me offers some familiar pleasures, akin to a Greatest Hits collection. Anyone who’s read him will know what a prime recommendation that is . . . Angie is a tonic, as Hiaasen’s heroines tend to be.” —Janet Maslin, The New York Times
“Carl Hiaasen remains the undefeated, unscored-upon conscience of Florida, maybe the conscience of the whole country. I laughed and laughed and laughed while I read Squeeze Me – until I remembered, hey, I live in Palm Beach! Oh yeah, spoiler alert – the python did it.” —James Patterson
“Novelists, like the rest of us, can’t look away from the Trump administration. Unfortunately, they haven’t found much interesting to say about it. Carl Hiaasen’s thriller Squeeze Me is, blessedly, an exception . . . Hiaasen is clear-eyed: He meets the president on his subterranean level . . . Squeeze Me is funny, but as with Hiaasen’s best work, it’s grounded in genuine outrage over the corruption that increasingly defines American political and cultural life. And it turns out there’s no better place to invoke that outrage than the wealthy swamps of Florida.” —Alex Shephard, The New Republic
