Carl Hiassen's latest book takes a long time to make its case

Basket Case offers Carl Hiassen's usual satirical look at unlikely lowlifes. But unlike most of his other novels, it's a pretty long slog until you reach the funny stuff.

Unlike Hiassen's other fictions, Basket Case is told in the first person, by one Jack Tagger. Jack is a reporter who mouthed off once too often to his newspaper's corporate boss and was thus demoted to the obituary page. When Jack finds out that his favorite rock singer, Jimmy Stoma, has died in a plane crash, he briefly interviews Jimmy's widow in hopes of getting a juicy quote.

Mrs. Stoma turns out to be the sound byte of Jack's dreams when her quotes from a previous interview contradict what she told Jack. This leads to the usual Hiassen shenanigans in which Jack runs afoul of corrupt Floridians and muscular goons, as he tries to find out what really happened to his rock idol.

And "usual" is, unfortunately, the key word. What seemed so novel and bracing in Hiassen's earlier novels seems to have hardened into a predictable style. Rather than straightforward insight and satire, what we get is:

* Lots of name-dropping. If you're a Florida sports fan and/or a rock-music buff, Hiassen peppers his fiction with enough real-life celebs to flatter your knowledge of pop culture. Whether this qualifies as satire is another issue.

* Cutesy character names. Jimmy Stoma's backing group is named The Slut Puppies. The once-indomitable newspaper for which Jack toils has been devoured by a corporate entity called Maggad-Feist. Which leads to my next gripe...

* Anti-corporate diatribes. Reams of pages are devoted to Jack's musings about old-fashioned journalism vs. modern-day corporate synergy. These seem calculated to bring tears to the eyes of retired newspaper editors everywhere. However, the average reader might not quite as moved.

* Worst of all, predictability. Hiassen's earlier work found seaminess in the unlikeliest locales. (For example, Hiassen's Double Whammy explored corruption at an innocuous fishing championship.) What's so surprising about finding that the death of a drug-addled rock star isn't all it's cracked up to be?

Along the way, Jack becomes better acquainted with his nemesis editor, to the point that they become lovers. Even given the slim likelihood that an editor would conflict her interests to that point, the novel's biggest problem is that at times, it seems as though the editor and her lover are the only two people on Earth who have any stake in avenging the rock star's death.

At about the two-thirds point, the novel finally delivers Hiassen's expected quota of black humor. For a first-time writer, that might be a herald of better things to come. From Hiassen, it means a low batting average this time around.