In late 2004 I was lucky enough to interview Carl Hiaasen, the satirist and Miami Herald columnist, for a Lunch with the FT.
During the conversation I asked Hiaasen, who has published more than 20 novels set in what is described in this book as the "Florida nuthouse", why he hadn't written a novel about the 2000 US Presidential election that hinged on Florida and its hanging chads.
"How could you improve on that? How could you come up with a cast of characters any more preposterous, or a scenario any more astounding than the one that took place? It's very hard," he replied.
And yet a decade or so later, the United States elected a President so preposterous, to use Hiaasen's own word, that even a satirist as talented as he might have shied away from writing about him. But with Trump's Mar a Lago property in West Palm Beach, the President dropped right into Hiaasen's territory, and I guess it was impossible to resist.
Squeeze Me is everything you'd want in such a novel. It is fast, funny and absolutely brutal. The President is not named - only the Secret Service code name is used, 'Mastodon' - but there is little doubt about who is being lampooned. The President's girth, orange tan and hair are all sent up mercilessly, but more pertinently so are his politics.
Squeeze Me starts with the disappearance of wealthy Palm Beach socialite Kiki Pew, a member of the Potussies, a group dedicated to supporting the President. The unfortunate Kiki turns out to have been swallowed whole by a giant Burmese python, but for various reasons both commercial and political this fact is never revealed. Instead the President is able to politicize her death by pinning it on a criminal plot involving Diego, a recently arrived illegal immigrant.
With the authorities apparently unwilling and unable to run against this flow, it is left to Angie Armstrong, "wildlife wrangler extraordinaire", to clear the innocent Diego. Angie, who captures and kills the python in question, is a typical Hiaasen heroine. She is strong and indomitable, determined and profane and a lover and protector of Florida's ever-threatened natural habitat.
Around her, Hiaasen builds his usual cast of the grotesque and colourful: criminals so moronic and debased they're only really a danger to themselves; greedy and reckless frat boys who never grew up; put-upon law enforcement officers; and many more. And then there is Mastodon, 'a soulless imbecile', and his First Lady, Mockingbird, who is having an affair with her protection officer. It's a three ring circus, hugely entertaining but alarming at the same time, because so much of it rings true.
There is a vicious precision to Hiaasen's lampooning of the President and his hangers on. At times you can actually feel the glee with which he sticks the knife in and twists. And what makes it so much more powerful is that everything is believable. Hiaasen, a master of this type of work, knows there is no need for exaggeration here.
For me this is his best and funniest novel since the 1980s and 1990s, when I was just blown away by the intensity of the writing and the sheer insantiy of plot and characters in novels like Double Whammy and Skin Tight. A triumphant return to the very best form of one of the very best writers of the satirical novel.