Book Review : Something Fishy Baits a Raucous Florida Thriller

Double Whammy by Carl Hiaasen (G. P. Putnam’s Sons:$16.95; 320 pages) Carl Hiaasen’s “Double Whammy” is a raucous, mordant whopper of a South Florida fish story with more weird and bloodthirsty creatures found above the water than in it.

There is Skink, the backwoods wild man, who dines on field animals that have been killed on highways and reads weighty books from an impressive library that holds up the walls of his dilapidated shack. He also trains a fish. This gnarled misanthrope with an improbable past clashes with the Rev. Charles Weeb, an odious, foul-mouthed caricature of a TV evangelist.

Weeb’s Outdoor Christian Network sponsors a television show by champion bass fisherman Dickie Lockhart called “Fish Fever” that promotes bass fishing as a magnificent religious experience. Lockhart always wins fishing tournaments because he cheats--his winning fish come from a refrigerator or from an underwater trap placed by confederates.

Lockhart is an Olympian figure among the nation’s fishing fanatics who lust for the fame and big prizes in the competitions for landing the largest of the largemouth bass, the most popular game fish in North America. His plug on TV for the rod, reel or lure used to “catch” his winning fish means big business for the manufacturer--and a big payoff to Weeb. The hottest lure on the pro bass circuit is the double whammy.

Lure of the Lakes

To cash in on the sport’s popularity, Weeb launches construction of a huge housing development with man-made lakes where fishing families can haul in bass to their heart’s content. The project turns out to be the Florida equivalent of a development for beachfront estates in Death Valley.

Wealthy Dennis Gault has only one passion--to defeat Lockhart, even if it means putting up with the ridicule of the redneck competitors who make fun of the burgundy Rolls-Royce Corniche that Gault uses to haul his high-powered boat to the fishing tournaments for the big bass known as lunkers or hawgs. Gault is convinced that Lockhart is cheating but he can’t prove it, so he hires a private eye, R. J. Decker, to get the evidence. Decker was Gault’s second choice; his first was killed in what was made to appear a boating accident.

A former Miami news photographer, Decker is a decent sort down on his luck. His problem is a temper that explodes as quickly as the top shutter speed of a Nikon, and which gets him into all sorts of trouble. He is also the ex-husband of Catherine, the novel’s heroine now married to a doltish chiropractor, which doesn’t stop her from sleeping with R. J. She and Gault’s sister, Laine, provide the obligatory sex interest.

Revenge of the Bass

Among the other characters are Bambi, a miniature poodle whose fate shouldn’t happen to a dog; a headless pit bull named Lucas, and Queenie, “the hugest large-mouthed bass in the world.” Queenie, whose mouth, when open, is as big as a basketball hoop, is cast as an aquatic avenging angel in a symbolic struggle with evil that lies at the heart of Hiaasen’s cynical, rough-humored novel.

The author, a muckraking reporter and columnist for the Miami Herald, uses the black comedy of “Double Whammy” to rail against the crass commercialism in sports events, the despoiling of Florida’s coastline by “pinky-ringed condominium moguls,” political corruption, racial discrimination and what he sees as the reeking hypocrisy of the hucksters among television evangelists.