It’s been a while since I read a book that was just plain laugh-out-loud funny. Which is why once I started reading “Squeeze Me,” I was having such a fun time that there was no question of not reading it all the way through. Set in Florida and published in 2020, the book is a thinly veiled parody of the Trump administration, Trump himself, the First Lady, his strident anti-immigration rhetoric and the resulting anti-immigration policies of his administration, and his Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida. Throw in a sudden infestation of a large number of pythons who are capable of eating human beings and a fearless wildlife wrangler called in to deal with them – who also has a strong sense of justice – and we have the makings of a hilarious plot, which is further enhanced by Hiaasen’s witty, satirical, writing style.

The plot in brief without giving too much away – a rich, old lady, one of a posse of rich old ladies who are ardent supporters of the President (they call themselves POTUSSIES) has gone missing at a high-society gala. At the same time, a humungous python with a huge lump in its stomach is found on the property. Angie is the wildlife wrangler summoned to deal with the python, and putting two and two together, she knows what has happened to the missing lady. But as luck would have it, an illegal immigrant, Diego, who has just landed in Florida by boat, ends up being implicated in the death of the lady and lands in prison, with the anti-immigration frenzy being whipped up by the President at its peak. Angie knows that Diego is innocent and wants him to be freed. How she manages to do this forms the main plot of the book.

But along the way, we meet a large number of characters, including a police detective, several Secret Service agents, the other POTUSSIES, the rich lady’s grown sons, the petty criminals sent to recover her body from the python, Angie’s stepson, Diego’s fellow inmates in the prison, the workers at the property where the python is found, and of course, the President and the First Lady. Hiaasen has cleverly skirted libel laws by referring to the President and the First Lady by their Secret Service “code names” rather than their actual names, but everything else – their entire personas – are clearly Trump and Melania. If anything, Hiaasen has made the President even more laughable than he is in real life, and there is a hilarious subplot involving his tanning room and the people who keep it up and running.

I hadn’t read any books by Carl Hiaasen before this, and it good to add another name to the list of authors whose books I like.

Squeeze Me
Author: Carl Hiaansen
Publisher: Knopf
Publication Date: August 2020

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Contributor: Lachmi Khemlani is a fan of the written word.