Newspaper, Rock ‘n’ Roll Worlds Collide

Poor Jack Tagger, onetime investigative reporter, has been demoted to obituary writer after spouting off to a superior. And, as if this weren’t punishment enough, Tagger is also plagued by fears of prematurely dying, his daily focus on the already dead seeming to exacerbate his phobia.

Carl Hiaasen’s new novel, “Basket Case,” will give readers plenty of chuckles over the inexhaustible drives that often send us in exactly the opposite direction of where we are meaning to go. Forty-six, lonely and hilariously neurotic, Tagger hasn’t figured out how to sustain a meaningful relationship, let alone rise to the fore of his field. But Hiaasen doesn’t leave us stranded, as he endows his protagonist with the capacity, and the good fortune, to finally grow up.

While working on an obituary for 39-year-old ex-rock ‘n’ roll star Jimmy Stoma of the Slut Puppies, Tagger discovers troubling indications that foul play may have caused the man to drown during a diving expedition. His meeting with the ex-star’s ambitious, self-involved wife, Cleo Rio, only heightens Tagger’s suspicions. Could budding rock diva Cleo, not present for the dive, have caused her husband’s untimely death? This is the question Tagger sets out to answer, and his efforts take us on a rollickingly comic and suspenseful adventure.

Seen through Tagger’s eyes, Cleo appears to be the perfect contemporary vamp: “She is maybe twenty-two years old; twenty three, tops. Medium tall, thin but not skinny, and alarmingly tan. The hair is bleached snow white and cut in a mock pageboy. The lips are done cherry red and the cheekbones are heavily shadowed, like a pair of matching bruises. She’s wearing a beige sleeveless top and tight white slacks. Her toenails, also white, remind me of paint chips.”

Hiaasen balances the novel with his portrait of the ironic, self-contained Emma, Tagger’s 27-year-old editor, with whom he maintains, at least for a time, an antagonistically competitive rapport. From Tagger’s perspective, Emma possesses little in the way of newspaper moxie, and he plans to gradually convince her to leave the business. But Tagger’s precipitous assessment of Emma has more to do with his sense of shame over his demotion than it does with her abilities.

Hiaasen’s depiction of the greed and dishonesty among the newspaper moguls themselves livens the story, suggesting that bold reporters tend to be at the mercy of their higher-ups, since, in these troubled times, readers, or so the moguls say, want to be soothed rather than alarmed by dismaying news.

Predictably, Tagger sets himself against the establishment when he prods Emma to allow him a week to investigate Stoma’s death, an unusual amount of time to prepare for a back-page obituary.

Just before Stoma is to be cremated, Tagger manages to view the body, and much to his shock (and to his great investigative delight), he can find no stitches on it, indicating that an autopsy hadn’t even been performed.

Turning to Stoma’s sister, Janet, a likable online porn performer, Tagger continues to probe on a possible murder motivation. Meanwhile, stranger things are happening, as one by one, former members of the Slut Puppies are being killed off. Pulling Emma along with him, Tagger steps up his investigation, and their new camaraderie turns even more comic and charming. With the help of Janet and some of his own technical wizard friends, Tagger finds that Cleo is readying herself to come out with a new song which she hopes will top the charts. Tagger manages to research the song’s origins to find that, yes, Stoma himself had written the piece long ago and had been planning to release it.

But Tagger has his own ambitions in tow, as he is hoping to unearth a very big story on Stoma, one that will restore him to days of passed glory. The suspense in “Basket Case” comes not from figuring out whodunit but how Tagger manipulates his higher-ups at the paper in order to get a front-page byline. Hiaasen’s witty explorations of muckraking journalism and the unabashedly self-interested moguls who run the papers will keep readers laughing straight through to the novel’s conclusion.