If you'd have bet me a million dollars...

...that I couldn't name 13 contemporary Floridian authors BEFORE reading this novel, you'd be a million dollars richer! However, what Naked Came the Manatee is and isn't in the way of content or literary worth notwithstanding, the novel itself is quite amazing.

Simply stated, it is a novel penned by 13 different authors from Florida. I know. There are 13 contemporary authors who live in Florida? I had the same question. When I think of Florida, I think of Hemingway and Jimmy Buffet and Disney. But a hub of contemporary fiction? Who knew? Before this novel, certainly NOT me!

Naked Came the Manatee is not a novel written in collaboration. Oh no! It is a novel begun by the ever-wacky and clinically looney Dave Barry (a long-time syndicated columnist, et cetera). Having finished Chapter 1, Dave boxed up his thirteenth of the manuscript and shipped it off to the second author in line, Les Standiford. Les read Dave's chapter, not without laughing and shaking his head I'm sure, and authored Chapter 2. Les packaged the first two chapters and mailed them to Paul Levine and so on through all thirteen authors. If nothing else, it is a remarkable achievement in the way of authorial cooperation.

What is also interesting is that each chapter, as well as the novel itself, is individually copyrighted from 1995 through 1996, the year of the novel's completion.

In addition to Dave Barry, Les Standiford, and Paul Levine, the remaining authors include Carl Hiaasen and often ultra-violent Elmore Leonard, the marquee writers featured in Naked Came the Manatee. Bringing up the rear are James W. Hall, Edna Buchanan, Brian Antoni, Tananarive Due, John Dufresne, Vicki Hendricks, Carolina Hospital (the author who possesses my favorite name of all the authors featured in the book), and, last but not least, Evelyn Mayerson. When I first looked at the list of names, I felt like I was window-shopping for things I neither needed nor wanted, but the novel won me over.

WARNING!: WHAT FOLLOWS ARE THUMBNAIL SKETCHES OF THE FIRST TWO CHAPTERS!!

Chapter 1: Booger, by Dave Barry

It is Saturday Night in Coconut Grove, Florida. It is a whirlwind of tourism on any given summer night, more especially this night. Marion McAllister Williams, the oldest resident of the Grove at 102 years old, sits and watches the gradual erosion of a once wholesome community. She is perceived as "a South Florida Treasure" by the Grove's wealthy residents and an artifact of museum-quality interest by outsiders.

Out in the bay, Hector and Phil, two nickle-and-dime thugs, are in a small-motored skiff heading toward the darkened beaches of the bay. Their cargo is Cuban in origin and the object of much speculation, so much speculation, in fact, that neither Hector nor Phil see the giant manatee, Booger, directly in front of their full-throttle boat. The ensuing accident, propels Hector, Phil, and their highly-valuable cargo from the boat and mildly annoys Booger, the most popular denizen of Biscayne Bay. Booger, longtime friend of Marion McAllister Williams, heads for Coconut Grove to visit his oldest companion and warn her, a la Lassie, of the impending mayhem. Furthermore, he wishes to be freed from a web of bungee cords, attached to a strange, steel cannister, in which he has become entangled.

Joe Sereno, rookie cop extraordinaire, is learning that policing the public is not all Miami Vice shootouts and Columbo detecting. Rather it is more often putting an end to public urination and avoiding being vomitted on by oversized drunks who insist on reading themselves their Miranda rights.

Chapter 2: The Big Wet Sleep, by Les Standiford

John Deal sits in Saturday night traffic on Grand Avenue, the most popular of all Coconut Grove's main drags. He is inside a vehicle he has named, The Hog, a custom Cadillac chopped up to look like and El Camino. John Deal shares a moment with an elderly black man sitting in a beach chair. He knows the stare he receives..."another Yuppie lemming." In the meantime, the Mardi Gras-like party is growing out of control. Screams and gunshots ring out. John Deal uses The Hog to bully a small import out of the way and advises a pretty woman in a pick-up truck full of scuba gear to do the same.

In his fury to be as far away from the insanity as possible, Deal nearly mows down a man in the road (Phil). Deal's hog goes into a spin and, ultimately, into the bay.

Deal later comes to in the house of Ms. Williams, who proceeds to explain how he was saved by Booger, a manatee who comes to visit her every so often to be cleared of the flotsam and jetsam of the bay in which he often becomes entangled and to snack on the crisp lettuce she saves for him.

Before Deal passes out, Williams cackles something about the end of the world.


Beginning with Chapter 3: The Old Woman and the Sea, authored by Paul Levine, the novel blossoms into a bizarre tale of romance and espionage. Of skinny dipping and the head of Fidel Castro. Of potential nuns having elicit sex with heads of state. Of ambition and righteousness. It is an entertaining romp through Florida and a wonderful exhibition of modern fiction from contemporary artists we may have never discovered otherwise.