By Eva Ciabattoni

Despite a deep distaste for the natural world, Chaz Perrone studied biology because he saw the potential to make a killing. His pursuit of a doctorate at Duke University is sponsored by the ruthless agribusiness tycoon Red Hammernut, who plans to profit from having a biologist on his payroll who is unconcerned by anything resembling a scruple. When Perrone concludes that his golden future with Hammernut is compromised by his wife Joey’s discovery of falsified water quality data, he kills her by heaving her over the side of a cruise ship.

Or so he thinks.

Apparently, murder is not among his talents. Perrone finds his life unraveling as he is pursued by a wife he believes to be dead, a detective convinced of his guilt, an employer who doesn’t trust him and a hirsute goon sent to baby-sit him.

Carl Hiaasen’s latest book, “Skinny Dip” (Alfred A. Knopf, 2004), is a romp through an intricate plot set in and around southern Florida. Hiaasen uses fiction in one of its proudest traditions: amusing the reader while bringing attention to a serious issue, in this case, the heinously exploited Everglades. Hiaasen harbors few illusions about human nature in general, and none about human nature that moves to Florida, a place that offers myriad “opportunities for predation,” in contrast to the upper Midwest, where “the crimes are typically forthright and obvious, ignited by common greed, lust or alcohol.”

Almost everything about Florida and its people is over-the-top, and Hiaasen’s literary milieu mirrors this. The result is laugh-out-loud scenes such as when Joey is trapped under what was once her marital bed as her husband attempts to prove his manhood with one of his girlfriends. A whiff of Joey’s perfume throttles back his ardor, and Perrone is left to wonder why he is forced into a faithfulness he failed to muster when she was alive. To quote Hiaasen: Perrone’s “cannon had jammed.”

An example of Hiaasen’s flair for characterization is the phlegmatic detective on Perrone’s case who, to the dismay of his neighbors, keeps two pythons. When his snakes slip their confinement, Detective Rolvaag resolves “to spend the remainder of his Saturday searching the property for his escaped pets, one of which doubtlessly would be slowed by a telltale Pomeranian-sized lump.” Giving plodding Rolvaag snakes as pets allows him to express a degree of edgy aggression preventing him from becoming a cardboard caricature of a straight-man detective.

Smart, funny and fast-paced, “Skinny Dip” maintains the reader’s experience as its primary goal. Wannabe writers could do worse than study Hiaasen’s methods.