Basket case

Once a hotshot investigative reporter, middle-aged Jack Tagger now bangs out obituaries for a South Florida daily, "plotting to resurrect my newspaper career by yoking my byline to some famous stiff." Jimmy Stoma, the infamous front man of Jimmy and the Slut Puppies, might be the stiff of Jack's dreams: dead in a diving "accident" that gives off a fishy smell -- if only Jack can figure out what happened.

It won't be easy, with untimely interference from (among others) his ambitious young editor, who hasn't yet fired anyone but plans to "break her cherry" on Jack; the rock star's pop-singer widow, Cleo Rio, who's hiding something that requires a brutish bodyguard to protect (though he's no match for Jack's frozen lizard); and the soulless, profit-hungry owner of the newspaper, whom Jack once publicly humiliated at a stockholder's meeting.

With clues from the dead rock singer's own music, Jack ultimately unravels Jimmy's strange fate -- a hilariously hard-won triumph for the greater good of muckraking journalism, and for death-obsessed Jack himself.

"Always be prepared" is Jack's motto -- and it's more than enough to guarantee a wickedly funny, brilliantly entertaining Carl Hiaasen novel.