DATE: Wednesday, February 26, 1997          TAG: 9702260046

SECTION: DAILY BREAK             PAGE: E5   EDITION: FINAL 

TYPE: BOOK REVIEW 

SOURCE: BY CRAIG SHAPIRO 

                                            LENGTH:   68 lines

``NAKED CAME THE MANATEE'' DISAPPOINTING TO MYSTERY FANS

HERE IT IS, proof positive that the whole is not always greater than the sum of its parts. That's too bad, because ``Naked Came the Manatee'' certainly doesn't hurt for components.

Thirteen members of the Florida literati were recruited for this ``comic thriller,'' each taking a chapter in the narrative.

Besides household heavyweights Carl Hiaasen (``Striptease'') and Elmore Leonard (``Get Shorty''), the lineup includes Pulitzer Prize-winning crime reporter/author Edna Buchanan; Les Standiford and Paul Levine, creators of the John Deal and Jake Lassiter series, respectively; and James W. Hall, Brian Antoni, Tananarive Due, John Dufresne, Vicki Hendricks, Carolina Hospital and Evelyn Mayerson, whose collective credits include novels, newspaper columns, short fiction, essays, plays, poetry and children's books.

Dave Barry is the odd man out in this baker's dozen. He's no novelist, not by a long stretch. He's hardly a humorist. But he is a ``name,'' and names sell.

``Naked Came the Manatee'' is also loaded with subversive humor and hard-boiled characters by the charter busload.

Separate accidents in decadent Coconut Grove lead to a gruesome discovery in the bay's nasty waters - the well-preserved head of Fidel Castro. Maybe.

Caught up in the mystery are a 102-year-old activist, her no-nonsense diver granddaughter, an ambitious reporter, a linebacker-turned-lawyer, hired guns, a self-serving emigre who would restore democracy to Cuba, Castro himself, his lover from long ago and ex-President Jimmy Carter.

Booger, the manatee of the title, serves as a combination Everymammal and Greek chorus.

The big mystery, though, is, given the meaty story, the caliber of the writers and that they're on their home turf, why doesn't the novel live up to its billing? It's not very funny or particularly thrilling.

``Manatee'' was serialized, beginning in November 1995, in Tropic, the Sunday magazine of The Miami Herald. With editor Tom Shroder at the helm, each chapter was passed from author to author. The book jacket doesn't say if they first got together to discuss things like plot development, but that isn't the problem. It flows seamlessly.

The problem is in the transition from newsprint to bookshelf. Presented weekly, in one-chapter bites, readers must have willingly taken the bait. In book form, there isn't enough here to hold even the casual mysteryphile.

Characters go undeveloped. The story is frustratingly linear. Because it was serialized, the narrative gives too much space to exposition. Because it originated in a newspaper, where unsuspecting children and Fundamentalists might read it, the action never gets down and dirty. This is South Florida, after all.

While the authors have no trouble picking up one another's thread, their individual voices are sacrificed. Leonard and Hiassen do manage to build a head of steam in the concluding chapters, and the way Standiford and Levine incorporate their literary creations is a neat touch.

On the other hand, Barry's contrived opening chapter reads like a schoolboy who is failing Pulp Fiction 101. The good news is it is the first chapter, and is soon forgotten.

``Naked Came the Manatee'' is kind of like watching a made-for-TV movie that should have been a feature-length film. You can't help wondering how it would have turned out if a grizzled veteran, say, the late Charles Willeford (``Miami Blues''), had gotten his teeth into it. MEMO: Craig Shapiro is a staff writer. ILLUSTRATION: BOOK REVIEW

``Naked Came the Manatee'' by Carl Hiaasen, Elmore Leonard, Dave

Barry, Edna Buchanan et al. G.P. Putnam's Sons. 201 pp. $22.95.

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