Ah, southern Florida…. Jess is a young mom stuck with the ne’er do well father of baby Willa in the middle of the Everglades. A stoned bro named Kark is with them and he and Slater, the slacker, think of themselves as potential reality show “glades men.” While considering her escape plan from these two losers, Jess finds a cache of gold bars, a discovery she keeps to herself. Unfortunately, a meaner, nastier pair of ex-convict jerks, the camo creeps, are spying on her.

Phil and Stu are unemployed middle aged failures in need of money and willing to do dress ups for kids parties (but as Elsa of Frozen and Dora the Explorer, not the more appropriate Bigfoot and Skunk Ape). Their current claim to fame is a viral video with Phil/Dora’s balls getting mistaken for the piñata and an ensuing frosting fight in the $8,500 Frozen castle cake.

Ken and Brad are the Bortle Brothers Bait & Beer owners, a rundown shop with no customers, which allows them a lot of time to watch “Shark Tank”. Ken has the business plan. Brad is just a nice guy who plays Candy Crush.

These disparate people come together as Phil, Stu, Ken and Brad (with Slater and Kark assisting with video) conspire to convince Midwest retirees via TikTok that the Michigan/Ohio “melon head” mythic creatures have also decided to emigrate to better weather Florida as the Everglades Melon Monsters. As the Bortle brothers admit, “Sane ain’t working for us anymore. It’s time to try crazy.” Plus, there will be T-shirts.

Aside from her secret creepazoid stalkers, whatever plan Jess has to get away with the gold in order to start a new life with Willa, it is all going to get more complicated with the film crew, the Melon Monster groupies, and treasure hunters traipsing around.

The story is fun and original — early on we want Jess to come out of this situation successfully and leave all the Florida men behind. There are some very ugly thoughts coming from the creeps Billy and Duck (I was praying for painful alligator swamp deaths for them), but overall the story is a sarcastic, funny take on Florida people, reality shows, viral social media and conspiracy nuts. Not so sure that real Florida people will like this story, but Dave Barry is hilarious as usual and knows his weird pop culture — 5 stars! ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

Some observations: Everyone knows the FBI tricked the Finders Keeper group and absconded with the buried Confederate gold in Pennsylvania in 2018 (Google it). Lots of Teslas in swampland, even ones with bulletproof glass.

Thank you to Simon and Schuster and NetGalley for an advanced reader copy in exchange for an honest review!

Literary Pet Peeve Checklist:
Green Eyes (only 2% of the real world, yet it seems like 90% of all fictional females): YES By page 3 we find out Slater has green eyes.
Horticultural Faux Pas (plants out of season or growing zones, like daffodils in autumn or bougainvillea in Alaska): NO I know prairie, desert, high mountain, Hawaiian, and Pacific coastal horticulture, but nothing about swamps and I never care to learn…I trust Dave Barry, Florida Man, to have gotten it right about gumbo-limbo trees.

This was the most fun I’ve had with. A book in ages. It’s not only laugh out-loud funny, but the story is wild, exciting and completely outrageous. I hope there will be a sequel with the Everglades crew. Really loved it and plan to tell everyone.

Not many books or movies can get me laughing out loud, but Dave Barry never fails. "This needs to be a TV series!" is some of my highest praise, and "Swamp Story" would most definitely be a TV show I'd watch. With dark humor, snappy dialogue, vivid and memorable characters, lots of slapstick and human stupidity, some violence, and some very gratifying carnage, the TV series "Swamp Story" would be even better than "Dexter."

This book is packed so full of plot twists, I cannot even begin to summarize it, so I won’t--it is much better that you just read this one and see for yourself why “Swamp Story” may be the single greatest Bright Spot of 2023.

Nonstop Action

Satire at its best

No Agenda
--Really, no apocalyptic warnings on the fate of humanity, no political messages lurking between the lines, no personal axe to grind via fiction. Not that I could discern. No surprise that Barry is a Pulitzer-award-winning columnist: his ability to use satire without ridicule or divisiveness is simply stellar. Barry exposes our weaknesses and foolishness without condemnation or polarizing judgments. I wish all of Hollywood, all novelists, bloggers, comedians, and artists could celebrate humanity with this much fun and this exemplary absence of antipathy and hostility.


Authenticity
– Even the most unbelievable turn of events, one after another, feels real. We are so caught up in the story, we never consciously need to exert that old classic, “willing suspension of disbelief.” One might say all the premises are ludicrous, but the storytelling is so masterful, who cares?

Dialogue - flawless!

It’s all good. It’s especially good when the guys brainstorm. Fans of "Punch Drunk Love" will recognize the hilarity of "another infinitely recursive macho-threat loop."

Swift exposition
– But not at the expense of depth of character!

How did Phil the journalist begin his descent into alcoholism; how does Erik the lawyer rationalize his gambling addiction; how did Jesse fall for a narcissist like Slater?

Plausibility

Somehow, every character is believable, no matter how over-the-top and hilarious. Politicians, lawyers, journalists, felons, local bait shop owners, all memorable and distinct, all familiar to us as archetypes rather than stereotypes. “Florida man” is most definitely an archetype, worthy of a place in Joseph Campbell’s canon. We get more than one quintessential example in the novel. A man known as Skeeter almost steals the show with his pet boar and a pregnant python, but an angry mobster "roughly the size of a commercial refrigerator" enters the scene, then an ATV loaded with gold bricks that date back to the Civil War, then -- well, a lot of different plot threads and people come together all at once in a perfect storm of a finale. The convergence of so many separate events is positively Shakesperian.

Really, you need to read the book. Let me just say that when the monster hoax actually works, TikTok users take it to funny and fun-loving levels, e.g., inserting snippets of the Melon Monster into other videos, most memorably, "a grainy black-and-white newsreel in which Melon Monster appears to be wading with the Allied Troops at Normandy Beach." Not quite as funny: less than 24 hours after the video posted, "more people were aware of the Melon Monster than could name the current vice president of the US." Ah, but we do not dwell on these dark tidings--we laugh at them!

One of my favorite asides: Cryptozoologists analyze the swamp-monster video, "frame by frame, as though it were the Zapruder film,” while the T-shirt and trinket-buying mobs know this is a silly and ridiculous thing, a Melon Head swamp monster, and they don’t care; they just love being a part of Something Big.

A longer, more detailed and thorough version of this review will appear elsewhere. (If I can work through the techno-glitches to post it at Newblaze.) I could cite dozens of hilarious excerpts, but this is Dave Barry, and that is the only proof anyone needs that this is the single most hilarious book you’ll read until his next one comes out.

So, six more months to buy the book I just read and loved. That's the downside of getting to be first to read an ARC: the long, long wait until you can buy copies for your friends! Thank you to Simon & Schuster and NetGalley for an ARC (advance reader copy) of this book.

OH MY!!! I've always liked Dave Barry but now I think I'm in love! This has to be the funniest book I have read in a long time. Bring on more Mellon Monsters, pythons, drug dealers, and shyster lawyers, mobsters and good guys!