I love a deep, dark mystery told with a light touch. A little humor makes a crime novel novel. It can even work before you crack the cover, as when I noted the sales lady's scowl of disapproval while ringing up the book, probably inferring from the cover that this guy (me) was going in for a little porno. I wasn't about to calm her twittering antennae which were so finely tuned to degenerate literature and its like-minded readers. But, the last laugh was in the reading.

Author Carl Hiaasen has no reverence for the nature of humanity, seeing human behavior as just so much material for irony and satire. Which starts here with sociopathic, philandering Chaz Perrone throwing his naive, beautiful wife Joey over the rails of the cruise ship on which they've been celebrating their two years of marriage. Get it? Skinny Dip.

But Chaz, an underachieving marine scientist with a desperate need to trade in on his inept education, forgets something pertinent to Joey. She's an ace swimmer and, by extension, diver. She's also loaded but, oddly, he's not after her money. His motive is far more demented: he's afraid she knows about his cover up of agribusiness tycoon Red Hammernut's illegal dumping of chemicals into the swamp waters of the Everglades. Chaz has been doctoring false environmental reports for his employer and he thinks Joey knows about it. To avoid exposure, he's ready and willing to do the unthinkable.

The last thing he thought he was doing by sending his joyous and spirited wife into the drink was that she'd wind up in the arms of another man -- one who will more than open her eyes to the sleazy degenerate she married -- as if attempted murder wasn't enough. But, that's exactly what happens when she's rescued on the threshold of certain death by prematurely retired ex-cop Mick Stranahan, a fiftiesh loner who lives on an island and shops for sustenance on the sea. He's as stunned as anyone when he drifts by a gorgeous, unconscious female riding the swells on a buoyant bag of hash.

After Mick slowly and tastefully brings the barely alive Joey back to consciousness and to health, his task is to break down understandable mistrust, along with her reluctance to partner in bed with a man so much older than she is. It takes her awhile, but she eventually finds him too irresistible and hunky to pass up -- plus he's a more than able confederate in her plan to treat hubby to a little payback.

But, before she can reveal the failure of his murder plan to that womanizing cheat, she needs to find out why the bastard did it. A little freaking him out with taunting visits by an unseen "intruder," a little blackmail -- it's all in the name of achieving justice in this unique and totally pleasurable take on the murder mystery. Make that attempted-murder mystery with a strong dash of romance. Is there such a genre?

In any event, this is hilarious, gritty, fun stuff and it puts Floridian Hiaasen on a par for mystery-comedy with Robert B. Parker and Elmore Leonard, the authors who have been ruling that devilish roost. If some movie producer is smart enough to make a movie out of it, it could turn into another "Get Shorty."