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Naked Came the Manatee - Confusing Came the Book
Date of Review: Aug 15, 2000
It certainly sounded like a good idea. The Miami Herald's Tropic magazine pulled 13 of Miami's most well-known writers, including several well known mystery writers, to do a serial novel. Each writer would pick up his or her chapter where the previous author (and chapter) left off.
With an assembled group that includes Dave Barry, Elmore Leonard, James W Hall, Carl Hiaasen, Edna Buchanan and Les Standiford, you'd think the results would be killer.
You'd be half right.
The problem is that of the authors assembled here, only about half rise to the challenge. Dave Barry has the easiest part, starting the novel off. He creates an odd cast of characters, starting with the title character, a manatee named, "Booger". This manatee, like Dave's other animals in his column, has the brains of day old toast. As the book progresses, we're introduced to a strange assortment of characters, including a 102 year old woman who befriends the manatee, a diver, a contractor (Les Standiford's John Deal), Fidel Castro, a Castro impersonator, three heads of Fidel Castro, his girlfriend, Jimmy Carter, some thieves, a reporter, and various others.
The plot, such as it is, involves the disappearance and recovery of the heads of three people who look like (and could be) Fidel Castro. These heads are found by the 102 year old woman, the manatee, and John Deal in a bizarre series of twists. As the plot unfolds, we learn of plans by the CIA for Castro, his desire to come to Miami, and of a manatee who seems to change personality each chapter.
Unfortunately, you get the feeling that several of the authors here, including Elmore Leonard, didn't really care much for what came before, or didn't feel like giving it much thought. As a result, the book veers wildly from plot twist to plot twist, adding characters and situations only to have them disappear the next chapter, never to be heard from again. For instance, there is a plot thread that has a few of the major characters visiting a new niteclub that has sharks in a floor aquarium. That aquarium bursts, sending several lawyers into the drink. Unfortunately, this seems there only for a weak lawyer joke and seems to play no role in the rest of the book. You find yourself shaking your head and wanting to flip back as you pick up new characters and lose others. The book only recovers at the end because Hiaasen seems to delight in tying up the loose ends, even criticizing (in a subtle way), one of his fellow authors for turning the manatee into Super Seadog!
If you like any of the authors assembled here, there is enough here to recommend a quick read. Otherwise, you would do better to start at some of these authors' other works. Naked Came the Manatee is a great experiment that fizzles in the end.
