Resumo de Basket Case - Carl Hiaasen

Jack Tagger is a reporter with the Union Register, and he?s obsessed. He?s obsessed with his own death and worries constantly about what age he will finally throw the seven. His editor, the young, naïve and unsettlingly sexy Emma, isn't cut out for the hard-nosed news world and it?s Jack's duty to save her from herself and the cut-throat world of the newsroom.
Having lost any chance of a front page by-line through his vocal hatred and public humiliation of the Union Register?s playboy owner, Race Maggad III, Jack has been relegated to the obituary column; a job which is having a profound effect on his personal life. Plagued by his own morbid curiosity, Jack?s relationships have gone down the pan. His ex-girlfriend is marrying a second rate spy writer and his mother is avoiding him. More specifically, she's avoiding feeding Jack's obsession by telling him about his own father?s untimely death.
The sniff of a murderous story piques his reporter?s instinct when Tagger?s rock idol James Bradley Stomarti, of Jimmy Stoma and the Slut Puppies fame, dies suddenly in a Bahamas diving accident. After writing a glowing obituary, Jack decides to do some journalistic muckraking and soon finds that all may not be what it seems. The grieving widow, Ms Cleo Rio, is doing a distinct lack of grieving and can?t decide if it was the diving or the clam chowder that finally did for her rock star husband. Despite her husband?s funeral being an unlikely event to use to promote her pop career, the widow Stomarti, feels duty bound to use the occasion to perform her latest intended release; an act that only arouses even more suspicion in Jack's mind.
His digging around forces Jack into contact with Ms rio and her entourage and after forcibly removing an eye from Cleo?s minder using only a dead, frozen lizard called Colonel Tom, Tagger realises he?s onto something sinister. He persuades the ambitious Emma to allow him to chase the story down and soon she too becomes dangerously entangled in the web as one by one the Slut Puppies start to die ? or just get shot in the ass.
The obsession with his own death and his unnatural knowledge of the ages at which various celebrities have checked out, seems to be subsiding, although his failure to save Emma from the world of the newspaper has turned into something much deeper and ultimately more bearable ? a meaningful relationship.
Jack and Emma soon track down the objects of Cleo Rio?s desire; her hirsute producer boyfriend, Loréal, and Jimmy?s last, but as yet unreleased, album recordings, hidden on a computer hard drive. On the hard drive, Jack finds Cleo?s latest song, Shipwrecked Heart ? and he realises it is actually written and performed by Jimmy Stoma. Now convinced of Cleo's guilt and her dishonourable intentions for the late Jimmy?s final recordings, Jack enlists the help of Jimmy?s cyberstripper sister, Janet Thrush, to get to the bottom of the story and manages to flush out the truth. Despite a hair-raising encounter with an air-boat in the middle of a Florida lake, the resulting story is front page news ? Jack?s first front page by-line in years.
Basket Case is another comical triumph for Carl Hiaasen. The snappy dialogue and surreal characters will keep you glued to the page as you jump from one encounter to another in this outrageous and hilarious story.

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