Skinny Dip was published by Knopf in 2004. Joey Perrone is pushed overboard from a cruise ship by her husband Chaz, a marine biologist who has been falsifying water-quality samples for a politically connected agribusiness polluting the Everglades. Joey survives — pulled from the Gulf Stream by Mick Stranahan, a retired police detective living on a stilt house in Biscayne Bay.
Rather than reporting the attempted murder (which would alert Chaz and let him destroy evidence), Joey and Mick devise an extended psychological campaign to drive Chaz mad: she appears and disappears at the edges of his life, moves objects in his house, leaves cryptic evidence that she’s alive. Meanwhile, the pollution scheme — in which a Red Tide-afflicted rancher is pumping fertilizer runoff directly into the Everglades, paying Chaz to certify the water as clean — threatens to collapse.
The novel is among Hiaasen’s most tightly plotted and emotionally satisfying, with Joey as one of his strongest female protagonists — smart, patient, and genuinely dangerous when wronged.
Collecting Skinny Dip
First edition (Knopf, New York, 2004): Boards with dust jacket.
Market values:
- First edition, fine in jacket: $15–$30
- Signed first: $30–$70