HBO to Develop Carl Hiaasen's Caper Skinny Dip

HBO confirmed today that it is developing Carl Hiaasen's 2004 novel Skinny Dip for television. Into a series, mini-series, or something else isn't known (at least to us).

The story involves Chaz Perrone, who might be the only marine scientist in the world who doesn't know which way the Gulf Stream runs. He might also be the only one who went into biology just to make a killing, and now he's found a way — doctoring water samples so that a ruthless agribusiness tycoon can continue illegally dumping fertilizer into the endangered Everglades. When Chaz suspects that his wife, Joey, has figured out his scam, he pushes her overboard from a cruise liner into the night-dark Atlantic. Unfortunately for Chaz, his wife doesn't die in the fall.

Clinging blindly to a bale of Jamaican pot, Joey Perrone is plucked from the ocean by former cop and current loner Mick Stranahan. Instead of rushing to the police and reporting her husband's crime, Joey decides to stay dead and (with Mick's help) screw with Chaz until he screws himself.

While Joey haunts and taunts her homicidal husband, and Chaz's cold-blooded cohorts in pollution grow uneasy about his ineptitude and increasingly erratic behavior, Mick Stranahan discovers that six failed marriages and years of island solitude haven't killed the reckless romantic in him.

(Source: The Hollywood Reporter)