Fever Beach: A Novel

by Carl Hiaasen

Overview

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • From the bestselling author of Squeeze Me comes a wildly entertaining Florida caper—a razor-sharp send-up of modern American life, packed with misfits and mayhem.

“No satirist arrived at our dystopian moment better prepared than Carl Hiaasen.” —Slate

“[Carl Hiaasen’s] reality with a side of escapism is a blessing for our fragile minds at this time.” —Samantha Irby in The Atlantic

Welcome to Fever Beach, where the sun blazes, the politics are unhinged, and the characters are as volatile as a summer storm.

Dale Figgo is a half-baked crusader with the rare distinction of being kicked out of the Proud Boys—for being too dumb. His latest bad decision? Picking up a hitchhiker on a rainy afternoon while running an errand.

That errand sets off a chain reaction involving Viva Morales, a clever, resilient newcomer trying to rebuild her life post-divorce. She’s renting a room in Figgo’s apartment and working at the Mink Foundation—a philanthropic front with something far darker beneath the surface.

Circling them is Twilly Spree, a hotheaded environmentalist with too much cash and a gift for over-the-top revenge.

When dark money and twisted motives bring their worlds crashing together, Viva and Twilly become unlikely allies. Together, they uncover a tangle of corruption and conspiracy led by a plastic-surgery-loving billionaire couple and a clueless congressman with delusions of grandeur.

In his most outrageous and deliciously funny novel yet, Hiaasen delivers a gleefully chaotic portrait of contemporary madness.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780593320945
Publisher:	Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
Publication date:	05/13/2025
Pages:	384
Product dimensions:	6.20(w) x 9.30(h) x 1.50(d)

About the Author

CARL HIAASEN was born and raised in Florida. He is the author of fourteen previous novels, including the bestsellers Squeeze Me, Razor Girl, Star Island, Nature Girl, Skinny Dip, Sick Puppy, and Lucky You, and seven bestselling children’s books, Hoot, Flush, Scat, Chomp, Skink, and Squirm. His novel, BAD MONKEY, was recently adapted into a hit series on Apple TV+ starring Vince Vaughn.

Hometown:

Tavernier, Florida

Place of Birth:

South Florida

Education:

Emory University; B.A., University of Florida, 1974

Editorial Reviews

"Hiaasen is working in a grand tradition that stretches back to Mikhail Bulgakov satirizing Stalinism and Charlie Chaplin mocking Hitler. At his best, he can pack a paragraph with so many little parodic bangs that it feels like a fireworks display when the explosions come so fast you stop saying “Ahhh” and just stand in slack-jawed bedazzlement…. While white-shoe lawyers, university presidents and media moguls cower before the MAGA assaults on American democracy and decency, this mischievous 72-year-old writer is fighting back with every political gag and sex joke he can get his hands on.” —Ron Charles, The Washington Post

"Carl Hiaasen’s Fever Beach turns, like many of his novels, on the actions of a collection of enthusiastic, comically unfocused malcontents....Mr. Hiaasen’s eye for the absurd, like his ear for dialogue, is as sharp as ever." — Anna Mundow, Wall Street Journal

"Fever Beach. . . features a witty, wounded hero with a heart of gold, boyish charm and profound anger at all despoilers of natural Florida. The author is each of those things, with a double dose of charm — but in real life he leaves the maiming, killing and vigilante butt-kicking to his alter egos, always in pursuit of righteous causes." —David Von Drehle, The Washington Post

"Nearly 40 years and 20-plus books later, what was happening to Florida is now happening to the entire country. The United States is being despoiled, corrupted, perverted, bulldozed into a playground for the wealthy. The archetype Hiaasen helped invent, the Florida Man, was once just an overconfident moron who, say, drowned while wrestling a gator for his beer. Now America is run by Florida Men. No satirist arrived at our dystopian moment better prepared than Carl Hiaasen. The bad guys in Hiaasen’s books have always been dangerous and mockable. These days they’re more dangerous than ever, and an infuriated Hiaasen mocks them just as viciously as they deserve —punishes them in ways that, thus far, the real world has been unable to do. At age 72, unexpectedly more relevant than he’s ever been, Carl Hiaasen is on a hot streak that rivals his early career. Fever Beach is among Hiaasen’s best novels, because it faces the horrors of our stupid times and portrays them in all their grotesquerie. . . . Forty years ago, Carl Hiaasen started writing novels because he was upset about what he saw happening to his own little corner of the world. These days, he might be the only writer mean enough, and funny enough, to chronicle what’s happening to us all." —Dan Kois, Slate

"Heavily plotted but peppily paced, bursting with quips and blazing with anger...” —Justin Taylor, The New York Times Book Review

"Remember Twilly Spree? The independently wealthy sometime ecowarrior who appeared in Hiaasen’s Sick Puppy (2000), and Scat (2009)? He’s in this new book, too, which is one of many things the novel has going for it. It also has Dale Figgo, a right-wing nutcase who was too crazy for the Proud Boys; Viva Morales, who’s renting a room from Dale, and whose bosses, a pair of alleged philanthropists, are almost certainly up to no good; an ambitious and deeply corrupt congressman; Dale’s mom, who isn’t thrilled about what her son is doing with his life; and a bunch of other delightfully weird characters. There is a serious story to be told about right-wing conspiracists, corrupt politicians, and shady philanthropists, and Hiaasen is sort of telling that story, but mostly he’s making us laugh—and not polite little giggles, either. We’re talking giant belly laughs, embarrass-yourself-in-public spleen-busters. This could be his funniest book yet." —Booklist

From the Publisher