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Review by Tom Corcoran
Remember the summer camp chain story? One kid would begin a scary tale, run it into a plot corner, and pass the telling down the line. Things got tougher as the story went camper to camper. The unraveling plot always lost out to the paragraph of the moment. In Naked Came the Manatee, 13 grown-ups, writers whose lives and work are identified with Miami and South Florida, prove that with care, humor, and technique, the unrolling and reweaving of an entertaining serial mystery can succeed.
The book began a year ago as 13 weekly installments in The Miami Herald Sunday "Tropic" magazine. Cribbing its title from 1969's Naked Came the Stranger, a "bad" sex novel created by 20 journalists under a single pseudonym, Naked Came the Manatee became the talk of Miami. Each contributor had only one week to create his or her installment.
Humorist Dave Barry went first, introducing Booger the manatee and an odd sunken container in a lead chapter that any author would be proud to claim. Mystery writer Les Standiford then trapped his series character, John Deal, in the madness of Saturday night gridlock in Coconut Grove. Paul Levine, author of the Jake Lassiter mystery series, paired Jake and Deal with Booger and a skinny-dipping female scuba instructor. Next, crime reporter and novelist Edna Buchanan brought her tough reporter/sleuth Britt Montero into the action.
What could be in the mystery container? Why did so many ugly people want it? By the time James W. Hall was asked for Chapter Five, severed heads, injured animals, ruined ecologies, maniacal citizenry, and a six-pack of subplots had grabbed Miami's attention. Naked Came the Manatee had ricocheted all over Dade County and its surrounding bays. No problem. Hall roped it together with wonderful imagery and revelations; and short story writer Carolina Hospital twisted things by delivering the tale to Havana. In subsequent chapters Evelyn Mayerson, Tananarive Due, Brian Antoni, and Vicki Hendricks offered the morgue, an ex-lover of Fidel Castro, the deaths of major characters, a mysterious key, a nightclub full of sharks, and trouble for Booger.
If it all sounds confusing, it isn't. There is a seamless aspect to this book that must be attributed to the talent of the writers. Amid the treachery, the numerous characters and scenes, and Miami's preoccupation with Castro, there exists a unanimous concern for two things. One is the changing face of South Florida; the book provides a wholly accurate composite of today's Miami. Second, the authors never drop their respect for the work put into previous chapters and the viability of the book's plot.
The three concluding authors had the hardest tasks. In his whacked-out yet oddly poignant vignettes, John Dufresne effectively swipes from Melville, Joyce, and others; Elmore Leonard tosses in what can only be called hilarious noir; and Carl Hiaasen, batting clean-up in the bizarre style that has served him so well, somehow pulls every thread into place.
Against plenty of odds, it works. It could have turned into a hollow spoof, but Naked Came the Manatee is a genuine, entertaining book.
Writer and photographer Tom Corcoran lives in Lakeland, Florida.
©1996, ProMotion, inc.