Rating: 
Summary: Newspapers, Death, and Rock Stars
Review: Carl Hiaasen turns out another entertaining novel with "Basket Case". Like "Lucky You", the protagonist of "Basket Case" is a newspaper reporter. This time around it is Jack Tagger, who has been busted down from a promising first page writer to slumming for the obituary page for embarrassing the CEO that bought the paper he works at a shareholder meeting. Tagger has a sharp wit, which he unleashes on everyone from his editor, Emma, to the CEO, Race Maggard while obsessing about the age everyone died at.Tagger stumbles upon a mysterious death while writing an obituary for the former lead singer of the group the "Slut Puppies". Something about the story the widow, Cleo Rio, gives about the death just don't add up. While following up, Tagger finds more clues, one thing leads to another, and before he knows it, he has stumbled upon a story that could ruin him, or land him back on the first page. "Basket Case" is a lot of fun. Tagger's wit is charming, and a fight involving the frozen corpse of a lizard as a weapon evoke some good laughs. Hiaasen uses Tagger's first person narrative to take on the newspaper industry and a few swipes at the recording industry. I didn't give "Basket Case" five stars because it is a little too straight forward, and the conclusion is fairly predictable. There are a lot of great characters that do some zanny things, but the villains don't inspire much comedic relief as they do in other novels, such as "Lucky You". I'd recommend this to any Hiaasen fan as a must read, and to those that appreciate crime fiction with a sense of humor. Elmore Leonard fans would be pleased with this novel.
Rating: 
Summary: The Downhill Slide Continues
Review: Once again I jumped at the chance to read something new by Hiassen. Once again I was let down. It's almost hard to believe the same author who displayed the incredibly incisive wit and sharp sense of character development and definition in Tourist Season, Double Whammy, Skin Tight, Native Tongue, and Striptease wrote this dull, cumbersome, lifeless book. Perhaps he set the bar too high with his first 5 novels (no small feat in and of itself), but I have seen a definite decline in his work since then. Without a doubt there are sure flashes of his brilliance in Stormy Weather and Lucky You (particularly the creative mode of demise conjured up for the corrupt trailer park builder in the former and the turtle-inspired transformation from editor into visionary in the latter). There are fewer in Sick Puppy. And none in Basket Case. The first person narrative just doesn't work. None of the characters have much staying power. The mystery is shallow. Without a doubt I will buy Hiaasen's next novel...just not in hard cover.
Rating: 
Summary: Kills, thrills, and a chilled lizard
Review: Basket Case is not only an excellent crime novel, it's the funniest murder mystery I've read since Bimbos of the Death Sun. Journalist Jack Tagger is forty-six - which, he morbidly notes, is the age at which JFK, Elvis and George Orwell died - and has a dead monitor lizard named Colonel Tom in his freezer. Though one of the Union-Register's best staff writers, he has been demoted to writing obituaries after insulting the paper's owner, but stubbornly refuses to quit. When burned-out rock star Jimmy Stoma drowns in the Bahamas, Tagger decides that this is that day's most newsworthy death, even though it means fighting with his editor (who is too young to have heard of Stoma's group) for every extra column-inch of text. After interviewing Stoma's widow, alleged singer Cleo Rio, Tagger decides that Stoma's death is too big a story for the obituary page - a suspicion that's confirmed when he learns that Stoma is to be cremated after a very brief and superficial autopsy that hasn't even harmed the tattoo on his chest. Tagger becomes even more intrigued after he interviews Stoma's sister, two of his back-up singers, and his keyboardist Jay Burns, and receives several very different accounts of Stoma's last days and future plans. Then Burns also dies under suspicious and gruesome circumstances, and Cleo Rio's bodyguard breaks into Tagger's apartment to steal his laptop computer, forcing Tagger to defend himself with the frozen lizard. Then two homicide detectives arrive at Tagger's apartment, and things begin to get really complicated. Tagger continues to investigate Stoma's death, but even after Stoma's sister disappears and another member of Stoma's old group is shot in the butt by burglars, Tagger still can't find any hard evidence that any of the deaths were actually murders. After discovering a likely motive for the killings, he begins to fear that the criminals may be as stupid as they are ruthless... and therefore twice as dangerous. As well as being a solidly-plotted thriller that builds to a climax worthy of John D. MacDonald, with some moments of genuine heroism on the way, Basket Case gives the reader a delightfully black-comedic tour of the carnivorous world of journalism and the even more cut-throat recording industry, both of which seem naturally to lead to treachery, piracy, kidnapping and murder.
All of the novel's characters, even the most minor ones, are colourful but somehow utterly believable: Emma, the obituary column editor who thinks it's disrespectful to speak ill of even the sleaziest deceased; Juan Rodriguez, sports-writer and conscientious bedroom athlete; the seductive narcissistic one-hit wonder Cleo Rio, and her wannabe producer boyfriend Loreal; the talented but eccentric Jimmy Stoma; his sister Janet, the SWAT-cam internet stripper; Dr Sawyer, the eighty-seven-year-old Bahamian obstetrician and some-time pathologist; 'Master Race' Maggad, the Union-Register's yuppie owner; MacArthur Polk, ancient career hypochondriac and Maggad's nemesis; slimeball politician Dean Cheatworth; Dominic Dominguez, the twelve-year-old master hacker with a necktie phobia; Karen, the pretty morgue attendant who's a sucker for romance; a hang-gliding rabbi; and many others. The dialogue, similarly, is sharp and funny but completely credible. So are the excerpts from Stoma's songs (co-written with Warren Zevon of 'Werewolves of London' fame), the accounts of his antics, and the news stories and scandals that the paper's other journalists are covering. Basket Case is intriguing, suspenseful, blackly humorous, and cheerfully cynical but never bitter. There's a little violence - it's a crime novel, after all - and a smattering of sex, but both are mostly kept offstage and never go over the top (unless you have a serious phobia of frozen reptiles). It's pure entertainment from the first page to the wonderfully twisted ending, and highly recommended.
Rating:
Summary: Disappointing
Review: I've enjoyed several of Hiaasen's books -- especially Striptease, Stormy Weather, Tourist Season, Sick Puppy -- but this one has been a disappointment. I'm about halfway through it and hope that the story and humor would improve has long since faded. I hate that I wasted a gift certificate on this book, so I'm determined to finish it. But you'll be much more satisfied buying one of the previously mentioned books than this one.
Rating:
Summary: as good as the hiaasen
Review: Hiassen's first few novels were so fresh and funny that he became a victim of his own success and kept failing when he tried to top them. for a while he was unreadable, zany just for the sake of being zany. with basket case he's back in great form and has written a very funny, dead-on indictment of american newspapers all while keeping the reader interested in the plot turns and characters. it's a wonderful accomplishment and laugh-out-loud funny. anyone interested in how newspapers work, forget all those self-serious reviews of the business that have come out lately and read this. it's better, more accurate and a hell of a lot more entertaining.
Rating:
Summary: Funny and entertaining
Review: Having heard lots of great stuff about Carl Hiaasen, I was dying to read this book about a murdered rock star. I was not disappointed. Hiaasen's style is great; its funny, smart, and to the point. This book makes a fantastic beach or airplane read. People with small children will appreciate it, too, since it doesn't strain woefully taxed brain cells.
Rating: 
Summary: average Hiaasen
Review: Carl Hiaasen is one of my favorite authors and Basket Case is the ninth book I've read by him. His books are fun, easily digestible "beach reads" that are often page-turners. But this one rates as just okay. His other books are more fun and manic. Skin Tight is still my favorite but Double Whammy and Sick Puppy are also a bunch of fun. Basket Case follows a death-obsessed obituary writer as he investigates the suspicious death of a bygone rock star who leaves behind an opportunistic low-class wife. It was a quick read but I was hoping for a little more entertainment value. Hiaasen can do better.
Rating:
Summary: Just the facts
Review: I found this another rollicking romp with Carl, but I was a bit distracted by one aspect of Jack Tagger's fixation with the ages at which celebrities died and his continual comparison of his life and theirs. Any obit writer would know that Elvis died at age 42, not 46. So it seems to me that Jack's angst should have been triggered four years earlier! But for this reader, Jack's story is better late than never.
Rating:
Summary: A Crazy Mystery in South Florida
Review: If you like Hiaasen's stories, set in the never-never land of south Florida, you should enjoy this one. I thought it was going to be a straightforward mystery, but that sly devil, Hiaasen, couldn't keep from being funny, and I laughed from beginning to end. The plot is simple. Jack Tagger, an aging, investigative reporter, is banished to writing obits for a south Florida newspaper when he humiliates the smarmy CEO of the newspaper chain. But he runs across the death of Jimmy Stoma, front man for the musical group, Jimmy and the Slut Puppies, under suspicious circumstances, and he romps off to investigate. Emma, his editor, tries to keep him in check, but he burrows into an increasingly smelly coverup of Stoma's death. As Tagger digs, Slut Puppies die like flies until he nails the murderer. It's vintage Hiaasen.
Rating:
Summary: Made me laugh out loud
Review: This is my first Hiaasen book, and will definitely not be my last. I was laughing out loud starting with chapter one. The way he writes and the expressions he uses will draw you in and keep you there. I have already recommended this book to many!
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