Steve's Reviews > Skin Tight

Fake. I guess there's some unintentional irony playing out when a book, poking savage fun at the cosmetic surgery business in phony and corrupt Florida, is itself a do-over of sorts. Hiaasen is a good writer, but one I've always felt owed, nearly everything, to Elmore Leonard. What gets him over the top, usually, is that he's a good student, and he adds his own outrage at what Florida has become. Skin Tight has the usual formula of ex-lawman, bizarre criminals, seedy but exotic landscape, and twisted plot. However, in this case, it's awfully thin stuff. The sad thing is, that the idea of a crooked and inept cosmetic surgeon (in the 1980s), dispatching hitmen to hide a nosejob gone wrong, is kind of cool. But a number times throughout the story, Hiassen goes unnecessarily over the top. Just a little closer to earth, and this story would have hummed. One thing that troubled me is that much of this could have been fixed. Instead the book reads like a draft (and a quick one at that). All of that aside, there was one golden moment where I thought Hiassen captured the 1980s perfectly -- or at least offered some powerful commentary on those trashy years. In it he has a bitchy ex-wife, dressed in a shiny sailor suit from Lord & Taylor, catching an anchor tossed by a killer, and following it to the bottom of the sea. That's right up there with Tony Montana burying his head in a mountain of coke.