Detailed plot summary
Paparazzo "Bang" Abbott waits outside a posh South Beach hotel, following a tip that pop star Cherry Pye has overdosed again. However, when paramedics bring a woman down to the ambulance, he sees that she is a body double. Meanwhile, the real Cherry is being driven to the nearest hospital in a private limousine by her entourage. The body double is Ann DeLusia, an actress hired by Cherry's family to make brief public appearances when Cherry is too inebriated to do so. Cherry's mother/manager, Janet Bunterman, tells Ann to take a few days off while Cherry is packed off, yet again, to drug rehab. Infuriated at having been fooled by a body double, Bang becomes even more obsessed with getting photos of Cherry under sordid circumstances.
In Los Angeles, Cherry jumps over the wall of the rehab center and hitches a ride to the airport from a nearby motorist, who happens to be Bang staking out the clinic. Pleased by his transparent flattery, Cherry takes him along when she charters a private jet back to Florida. Aboard the plane, Bang is astonished when she decides to have an onboard quickie with him. His astonishment turns to outrage when she drives away in a limousine and strands him at the airport, taking his camera bag and BlackBerry with her. Meanwhile, Ann spends her few days off touring the Florida Keys. While driving through Key Largo, she swerves to avoid a man scooping a roadkill off the highway and drives off a bridge. When she wakes up, the man, "Skink", has rescued her.
An apologetic Skink brings Ann along on a mission to kidnap and intimidate real estate developer Jackie Sebago. Afterwards, Skink has a friend give Ann a ride to the nearest hospital, giving her the number for his seldom-used cell phone in case she ever needs help. Meanwhile, over Janet's protests, Cherry's record promoter, Maury Lykes, assigns a man nicknamed "Chemo" to replace her recently fired bodyguard. As revenge for her theft of his cameras and smartphone, Bang kidnaps Cherry outside her hotel at gunpoint, only to realize that the woman he has snatched is Ann. He demands, in exchange for Ann's safe return, that Cherry be made available to him for a private photo shoot. Ann is furious to hear that the Buntermans have not reported her missing. She hurriedly uses her cell phone to contact Skink.
When the Buntermans refuse Bang's demand, he dresses Ann up in costume and shoots pictures of her with a discarded syringe, making it look as if "Cherry" is a drug addict. His threat to release the photos is taken much more seriously than his threat against Ann's life. In fact, since Cherry's career is dangerously close to ending already, her father Ned suggests using the kidnapping as a publicity stunt to boost interest in her upcoming concert tour. The photo shoot and hostage exchange takes place on Star Island, in the rented home of Cherry's actor boyfriend. Cherry is duped into thinking that she is posing for the cover of Vanity Fair , while Ann confronts her employers over their indifference to her safety. At that moment, Skink tracks her down; Ann prefers to leave with him rather than the Buntermans.
After the photo shoot, Chemo confiscates the digital memory cards from Bang's cameras. Maury had ordered him to kill Bang, but Bang convinces him they can make a fortune publishing the photos after Cherry is killed. Chemo decides to let Bang live and hangs onto the photos. Meanwhile, the Buntermans meet with Ann and Skink, offering $50,000 in hush money. Ann declines, settling instead for plane fare back to California and the price of a Zegna suit she bought for Skink. She also quits her role as Cherry's double, warning the Buntermans never to contact her again. Maury flirts with the idea of paying Chemo to kill Ann, but Chemo–having spent time with Cherry and her family–has taken Ann's side and warns Maury not to send anyone else after her.
The Buntermans admit to Cherry that the photo shoot was a ruse, but she is pleased to hear that she will be the star of a media blitz surrounding her fake kidnapping. However, she is upset when she is told that, to sell the story, she will need to be secluded for a few days, ostensibly "recovering" from her ordeal. With Skink's assistance, Ann makes a conspicuous appearance at a nightclub using Cherry's name. A short time later, Cherry escapes from her parents' guard and goes to the club. There, Ann tells Cherry about her role as Cherry's "stunt double". Cherry launches herself at Ann in an inebriated rage before Chemo carries her out. As he does so Cherry vomits, inadvertently ruining the memory cards in his pocket containing the photos.
Cherry's "meltdown" is captured by the paparazzi outside the club, instantly sabotaging her entourage's plan to sell the kidnapping story. Ann and Skink slip away in the chaos. Bang, however, does not get a photo of Cherry, as he is shot through the buttocks by a thug hired by a disgruntled tipster. In a touch of poetic justice, Bang finds himself on the receiving end of his profession's notorious indifference to pain and suffering: as he lies in agony on the sidewalk, none of his fellow "shooters" are inclined to give him aid and keep snapping photos as he is lifted into an ambulance.
The "meltdown" causes Cherry's career to collapse, and her parents separate. Maury is forced to flee the U.S. and is eventually murdered by the father of an underaged client. Chemo quits security work and returns to his former career as a mortgage loan broker. Bang is forced to switch careers, opening a small portrait studio in Culver City, California. Ann establishes herself as a serious actress in Hollywood. She never sees Skink again, but she hears from their mutual friend Jim Tile that he is "in a good place".
Carl Hiaasen is an American journalist and novelist. He began his career as a newspaper reporter and by the late 1970s had begun writing novels in his spare time, both for adults and for middle grade readers. Two of his novels have been made into feature films.
Sick Puppy is a 2000 novel by Carl Hiaasen.
Tourist Season is a 1986 novel by Carl Hiaasen. It was his first solo novel, after co-writing several mystery/thriller novels with William Montalbano.
Skinny Dip is a caper novel by Carl Hiaasen first published in 2004. It is his 11th work of fiction for adult readers. It is his fifth book featuring the character known as "Skink" and his second novel including the character Mick Stranahan, a former detective. It involves a murder plot and a subsequent attempt to exact revenge against the backdrop of a threat to Florida's Everglades National Park.
Entourage is an American comedy-drama television series that premiered on HBO on July 18, 2004, and ended on September 11, 2011, after eight seasons. The series was created and largely written by Doug Ellin and chronicles the acting career of Vincent Chase, a young A-list movie star, and his childhood friends from Queens, New York City, as they attempt to further their nascent careers in Los Angeles.
Basket Case, published in 2002, is the ninth novel by Carl Hiaasen. It is a crime novel set in Florida that centers on the death of singer Jimmy Stoma, the former lead man of "Jimmy and the Slut Puppies". This novel marks the first time Hiaasen used first-person point of view to deliver the novel. In previous works, he used third-person view.
Strip Tease is a 1993 novel by Carl Hiaasen. Like most of his other novels, it is a crime novel set in Florida and features Hiaasen's characteristic black humor. The novel focuses on a single mother who has turned to exotic dancing to earn enough money to gain legal custody of her young daughter, and ends up matching wits with a lecherous United States Congressman and his powerful corporate backers.
Stormy Weather is a 1995 novel by Carl Hiaasen. It takes place in the chaotic aftermath of Hurricane Andrew in South Florida and concerns the tragic effects of the disaster, including insurance scams, street fights, hunting for food and shelter, corrupt bureaucracy, a ravaged environment and disaster tourists.
Clinton Tyree, a.k.a. Skink, is a fictional character who has appeared in several novels by Carl Hiaasen, beginning with Double Whammy in 1987. He is a former governor of Florida who suddenly abandoned his office to live in the wilderness, most often the Everglades and, later, the Florida Keys. Tyree is depicted as a skilled outdoorsman, a partaker of roadkill cuisine, and a fierce and slightly unhinged opponent of sprawl and overdevelopment in the state.
Double Whammy is a 1987 novel by Carl Hiaasen. The protagonist, a private investigator, is hired to expose a celebrity bass fisherman as a cheat and is drawn into a frame-up for murder. The book introduced the character of "Skink", who becomes a recurring character in Hiaasen's subsequent novels.
Nature Girl is a novel by Carl Hiaasen, published in 2006.
Native Tongue is a novel by Carl Hiaasen, published in 1991. Like all his novels, it is set in Florida. The themes of the novel include corruption, environmentalism, exploitation of endangered species, and animal rights.
Skin Tight is a novel by Carl Hiaasen. It focuses on a former detective for the Florida State Attorney's office, who becomes the target of a murder plot by a corrupt plastic surgeon.
Kari Swenson is a veterinarian in Bozeman, Montana and former biathlete who earned a bronze medal as a member of the 1984 U.S. relay team competing in the first women's Biathlon World Championships in Chamonix, France. Swenson placed fifth overall in the women's 10-km final, which, at the time, marked the best performance for a U.S. biathlete of either sex in 26 years of international biathlon competition. In 2015, Swenson and her 1984 teammates were inducted into the U.S. Biathlon Hall of Fame.
Blondell Wayne Tatum, a.k.a. Chemo, is a fictional character who has appeared in two novels by Carl Hiaasen, Skin Tight (1989) and Star Island (2010).
The River Murders is a 2011 American psychological crime drama film directed by Rich Cowan and starring Ray Liotta, Ving Rhames, and Christian Slater.
Maria Elizabeth Ridulph was a seven-year-old girl who disappeared from Sycamore, Illinois, on December 3, 1957. Her remains were found almost five months later in a wooded area near Woodbine, Illinois, approximately 90 miles (140 km) from her home. Maria was last seen by her friend on her neighborhood corner of Center Cross Street and Archie Place with an unknown man in his early twenties who called himself "Johnny".
Skink - No Surrender is a young adult novel by Carl Hiaasen, published on September 23, 2014. It is described as Hiaasen's first young adult novel. He has authored four previous novels for "young" readers. Like all of his novels, it is set in Hiaasen's native Florida.
Razor Girl is a 2016 novel by Carl Hiaasen.
Squeeze Me is a novel by Carl Hiaasen released on August 25, 2020.
