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Deep Water
A witty satire of planned communities introduces readers to Serenity, Florida--the lifelong dream of amusement park scion Waldo Whipple--a town on the verge of a very public nervous breakdown. Reprint.
- GenresFiction
Mass Market Paperback
First published January 1, 2001
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Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews
October 15, 2018
Fun - ok, but no way is Date superior to Hiassen as touted on the cover of my paperback. Didn't catch myself once laughing out loud once.
To me it was a Hiassen "want-to-be", but needed much more delvelopment of character, place, and plot.
To me it was a Hiassen "want-to-be", but needed much more delvelopment of character, place, and plot.
February 12, 2018
What a funny book, poking some fun at an "imaginary" theme park and resort style communities. I real laugh out loud book.
November 15, 2011
Was it the Bible that said, “There’s nothing new under the sun?” Or Shakespeare? No, St. Willy was the one who claimed every plot had already been used. Regardless, Deep Water by S.V. Date reads like the author pieced together his plot and characters from cast-off notes found on crumpled pieces of paper stolen from Carl Hiaasen’s trash can. Specifically, Deep Water treads perilously close to Hiaasen’s Native Tongue for my taste, which is not to say that Date is an inadequate writer.
He’s not. He’s very, very adequate and I will certainly be buying and reading all his fiction output. What he lacks in Hiaasen’s off-the-deep-end character creativity and talent for nailing descriptive phrases with a venomous twist, he makes up with (for the most part) a true gift for flowing narrative. The problem is that, for anyone who has read all of King Carl’s books, everything Date did in Deep Water has already been done, and slightly better.
Don’t believe me? Let’s take a quick look at a few examples.
1. Date gives us a Florida-based amusement park run by a miscreant CEO. He calls it Whipple World, an idea a little too close for comfort to Hiaasen’s Amazing Kingdom of Thrills.
2. For a main character, we get, Ernest Warner, a disillusioned reporter working for a sanitized corporate newspaper in Orlando. Hmm, but Hiaasen already gave us, Joe Winder, Miami investigative reporter burnout.
3. Instead of Hiaasen’s cast of sideshow freaks which featured truly disturbed people like a weight-lifting security force led by a guy who ingested steroids and nutritional supplements from an IV he carried around with him, the best Date could generate was a foot fetish.
This feeling of literary deja vu probably would have been less intense if Date weren’t another Florida journalist turned novelist, like Hiaasen, and hadn’t given us a book that has so clearly already been done before. But other than this small nitpick the size of the entire Himalaya Mountain Range, Deep Water was an enjoyable read, especially for those among us in need of more Florida noir writers to keep us fixed between Tim Dorsey and Carl Hiaasen book releases. For the very reason there are so few working in this “genre,” it behooves fans like me to do my dead level best to overlook the fact that S.V. Date’s Deep Water is less original than most.
Doesn’t mean it’s bad. It’s just a shame that the writer chose not to even attempt to blaze his own creative trail, like Tim Dorsey, and instead chose to walk timidly in the large shadow cast by one of Americ’as greatest living writers. And what’s wrong with that? Nothing. Absolutely nothing. The writing was good. Better than most, but the single takeaway feeling was one of being slightly underwhelmed.
He’s not. He’s very, very adequate and I will certainly be buying and reading all his fiction output. What he lacks in Hiaasen’s off-the-deep-end character creativity and talent for nailing descriptive phrases with a venomous twist, he makes up with (for the most part) a true gift for flowing narrative. The problem is that, for anyone who has read all of King Carl’s books, everything Date did in Deep Water has already been done, and slightly better.
Don’t believe me? Let’s take a quick look at a few examples.
1. Date gives us a Florida-based amusement park run by a miscreant CEO. He calls it Whipple World, an idea a little too close for comfort to Hiaasen’s Amazing Kingdom of Thrills.
2. For a main character, we get, Ernest Warner, a disillusioned reporter working for a sanitized corporate newspaper in Orlando. Hmm, but Hiaasen already gave us, Joe Winder, Miami investigative reporter burnout.
3. Instead of Hiaasen’s cast of sideshow freaks which featured truly disturbed people like a weight-lifting security force led by a guy who ingested steroids and nutritional supplements from an IV he carried around with him, the best Date could generate was a foot fetish.
This feeling of literary deja vu probably would have been less intense if Date weren’t another Florida journalist turned novelist, like Hiaasen, and hadn’t given us a book that has so clearly already been done before. But other than this small nitpick the size of the entire Himalaya Mountain Range, Deep Water was an enjoyable read, especially for those among us in need of more Florida noir writers to keep us fixed between Tim Dorsey and Carl Hiaasen book releases. For the very reason there are so few working in this “genre,” it behooves fans like me to do my dead level best to overlook the fact that S.V. Date’s Deep Water is less original than most.
Doesn’t mean it’s bad. It’s just a shame that the writer chose not to even attempt to blaze his own creative trail, like Tim Dorsey, and instead chose to walk timidly in the large shadow cast by one of Americ’as greatest living writers. And what’s wrong with that? Nothing. Absolutely nothing. The writing was good. Better than most, but the single takeaway feeling was one of being slightly underwhelmed.
January 3, 2018
Hiaasen-like comedic novel about Whipple World (strikingly similar to Disney) and the strange goings-on at the "resort community" (read Celebration). Fairly interesting characters and plot that will bring a laugh to those of us who call the Land of Mickey (or Morty the muskrat) home.
November 12, 2013
I loved this book, and would read it a THIRD time, probably on the plane to Orlando. The town is eerily similar to Celebration, the town that Disney built, and every town has a dark side!
July 5, 2012
Not as good as Hiassen but in the same mode and decent beach reading.
Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews