Carl Hiaasen Nature Girl

Nature Girl

Carl Hiaasen

Knopf, Nov 2006, $25.95

ISBN 0307262995

In Florida, the tourist Jeter Wilson died of a heart attack following a snake bite leaving Everglades airboat owner Sammy Tigertail stuck with disposing the body, which he does in one of the swamps. At about the same time that Sammy struggles with the corpse, Honey Santana is irate with telemarketing realtor pitchman Boyd Shreave, who made ugly obscene sexual comments when she rejected his pitch.

Honey decides to get even with Shreave as only she can. She begins a scheme to hurt him in the shorts enlisting her former husband Perry Skinner and her preadolescent son Fry and getting Boyd to come to Dismal Bay in the Everglades. He does with his girlfriend Eugenie Fonda at the same time private investigator Theodore Dealey working for Shreave's wife hopes to catch him with his shorts down. As she implements her plan, Sammy is caught in the middle still trying to get rid of Jeter's pesky spirit. Before anyone can blink all hell has come to the Everglades as these and others run amuck.

Less biting satire and more a zany face, Carl Hiaasen provides an amusing slap stick thriller that paints a wild picture of the Everglades in which the two legged animals are the beasts. The story line loosely contains a plot of revenge at it core though myriad of subplots converge because everyone is at the wrong place at the wrong time. The cast is classic comedy with people tripping over one another all because Honey goes berserk when Shreave interrupts her dinner with obscenities; from there it is all down hill as everyone wants to sell but not buy swampland.

Harriet Klausner