On a Clear Day I Can Read Forever

Let’s see: A severed arm, a voodoo queen, a Medicare fraudster, a fugitive schoolteacher, a sexy coroner, a Yankee developer, a Bahamian fisherman, a demoted cop, an ambitious sheriff, a murderous widow, a pill-pushing doctor, hungry sharks, restaurant roaches, a tiny terrier, an obese Siamese, a poorly behaved primate. And, oh yes, a hurricane with a wimpy name. Carl Hiaasen doesn’t miss a trick in Bad Monkey (Knopf, digital galley), which makes it don’t-miss summer reading.

This black comedy crime caper may strike some as outlandish, but Floridians will laugh with recognition because the Sunshine State is so ripe for satirization. I found it perfectly plausible that disgraced Keys cop/health inspector Andrew Yancy would use a severed arm to angle his way into a homicide investigation and to woo a Miami medical examiner. Also, that the hairy arm in question would later go missing in a Callaway golf bag, but the media would miss the story because of the unfortunate decapitation of a country music star who collided with a cruise ship. “Rule one: A celebrity head always trumps an anonymous arm.”

Such “sad but true” details, combined with a pretzel plot and gleeful writing, make Bad Monkey a laugh-aloud romp. Carlheads, rejoice! 

I have a good friend (yes, Dean, you) who does a wicked snort when something strikes him funny. I’m more grin-and-giggle, but I admit to several good snorts while reading Dorothea Benton Frank’s chatty The Last Original Wife (Morrow, digital galley). In this “she said, he said” tale of a long marriage on the rocks, Leslie Anne Greene Carter, 58, and Wesley Carter, 63, confess all (or almost) in separate therapy sessions. Les, for example, explains how an incident on a vacation trip to Scotland led her to take a vacation back home to Charleston from Atlanta and reassess her life. Wes’s side of the Scotland trip has him almost missing his tee time at St. Andrews.

The laughs come because sympathetic Les’s observations on everything from “the Barbies,” Wes’s friends’ new young wives, to a romantic encounter with an old friend, are so spot-on. “I was sick-to-death with feeling bad about not being some hot number with fake tan, straight hair, and a bald you-know-what. (I still don’t understand that last one),” she says. Les makes a good case for being taken-for-granted and unloved, but she’s not mean or vengeful, even when she finds Wes has been poor-mouthing for years. A sudden urge to kick him in the teeth passes.

Readers, however, might like to give Wes kick in the you know where, he’s so self-absorbed and clueless. He’s not a bad guy; he just doesn’t get it — that is until mortality comes knocking and their two grown children come home to roost. Can this marriage be saved? Kudos to Frank for making Les see that whatever comes next, she first has to save herself.

The set-up of Kevin Kwan’s funny first novel is familiar: Boyfriend invites girlfriend to a family wedding so she can meet his relatives, but doesn’t tell her they’re wealthy snobs. So what’s different here? Handsome New York history prof Nicholas Young fails to tell ABC (American-born Chinese) Rachel Chu that he’s Singapore’s most eligible bachelor and that his family isn’t just rich but fabulously, extravagantly wealthy. Hence the appropos title Crazy Rich Asians (Doubleday, digital galley).

Rachel is stunned by the lavish lifestyle of private planes, opulent estates, designer clothes, old money. Although Nicholas’ cousins, glam fashionista Astrid and friendly flamboyant Oliver, are welcoming, his resolute mother Eleanor is already conspiring with her close friends to thwart any engagement. So are numerous back-stabbing socialites who see themselves as Nicholas’ princess bride. Rachel’s no slouch in the looks and education department, but she’s not connected to the Taipei Chus, or to any other dynastic Chinese family. No wonder she worries about fitting in with the Youngs and their ilk, “whose lives revolve around making money, spending money, flaunting money, comparing money, hiding money, controlling others with money, and ruining their lives over money.” 

Kwan’s comedy of manners is itself rich with telling details, Malay slang and Cantonese phrases, all defined in context or in footnotes, some of them delightfully snarky. Crazy Rich Asians is crazy good.