When a story opens with a rat being thrown from one car into another one that just happens to be passing, you know that you’re in for an odd story. Of course, this being Carl Hiaasen’s story, it’s not even as simple as that. The ‘rat’ is in fact a blue-tongued mango vole, one of only two remaining in the world – which is why it’s a bit of a shame that a state trooper shoots it. Having not quite grasped the seriousness of their mission to steal the creatures, Bud Schwartz and Danny Pogue have soon dispensed of the last remaining vole in a similar manner and have to return to the commissioner of their crime with an empty box. Fortunately, she knows they are telling the truth about completing the job, because the theft is all over the news. Unfortunately, this doesn’t stop 70 year old Molly McNamara from shooting Danny Pogue in the foot as a punishment for lying. She doesn’t like liars or bad language, as the hapless burglars quickly learn.

This is just the beginning of a lengthy adventure (500 pages) during which a medley of generally unsavoury characters scheme, shoot and threaten each other in their often ingenious attempts to achieve their aims. The dispute is bigger than one newly extinct species: Francis X Kingsbury, a thoroughly rotten human being with an unusual past, intends to build a golf complex on a valuable preservation area next door to his theme park, the Amazing Kingdom. Not content with using the Kingdom to compete (badly) with Disney, Kingsbury wants to pave over the ecologically diverse area in order to make a killing in real estate. Frustratingly, the usual bribes and diversions that make such lucrative business possible are hitting a small obstacle in the shape of ‘Mothers of Wilderness’, a local environmental group whose elderly leader is branching out into environmental terrorism. However, Kingsbury has his pet goon, Pedro, to do the really dirty work…

While this is happening, a myriad of other characters live out their odd destinies. Nina is beginning her career as a writer – on a sex phone line. Her boyfriend, Joe, is trying to pursue a stable career as a publicist for the Amazing Kingdom, despite his antipathy towards idiots. Bud and Danny look forward to developing their criminal careers in a new direction, while an FBI agent finds his objectives derailed in a surprising manner. Fish and Game are on the hunt for a panther that seems to be capable of moving vast distances. Pedro discovers the joys of IV tubes. A grumpy dolphin attempts to get his rocks off. And there seems to be a rather odd fellow living in the words.

My thoughts

In this story Hiaasen once again develops the key ideas and themes of his previous novels: he satirises big business’ cavalier disregard for the environment, the gullibility of tourists, and the corruption of politics. It will surprise few who’ve read him to know that he also works as a journalist in his native Florida, where his books are set, exposing the same kind of schemes that he vicariously destroys in ‘Native Tongue’. It is clear that he intends his books to create a certain resonance with his readers, despite the comic overload.

Although all the characters are odd in some way, it is the characters seeking to exploit the land that are truly grotesque. By the time Pedro chewed off his own foot I no longer believed in him as a possible human being. He was a frightening lump of drug induced violence, incapable of achieving the simple extermination of his enemy. Similarly, although Kingsbury initially seems little more than a bully who is incapable of creating a coherent sentence, he becomes increasingly repulsive until he is almost a caricature of a caricature. The gradual disintegration of the characters allows Hiaasen to ratchet up the sheer gruesomeness of the action until it creates physical responses like wincing, but the slapstick nature of events means that the reader is comfortably distanced from feeling actual concern.

The character’s destinies are closely intertwined as they all begin to act in increasingly desperate and often deranged ways. In this sense, the novel is well held together. Despite frequent switches between characters, the third person narration and closely related action meant that I never felt anything was irrelevant or distracting me from the ‘main story’. In fact, the quick pace meant that I would devour great chunks of the book in one sitting. I also appreciated the way that Hiaasen never relies upon cliff-hangers the way some lesser writers do. There are no abrupt switches where one character is left hanging on to the edge of a cliff, or another character abandoned mid startled scream. The action unfolds naturally and I always knew where it was going, which meant that I was intrigued without being frustrated.

That doesn’t mean that I was never surprised by some details, but Hiaasen tends to use irony to get a lot of his points across, and that’s reliant upon having the reader ‘on-side’ rather than trailing a few steps behind. This leads to some lovely touches of humour that made me smile, if not always actually chuckle.

The chapters are not overly long, typically about ten pages, and these are usually divided further by sections focusing on different characters. This made it easy to pause when I really needed to – like to get some sleep! The writing style is fluent and often rendered gently comic through the choice of language. For example, a photograph of an animal’s mouth is described as allowing a ‘splendid’ view of the creature’s ‘tiny indigo tongue’. I found the book enjoyable to read without being too simplistically written. The tone and mood of the novel was consistently humorous, rather than having concentrated bursts of humour, even when the subject matter was somewhat darker.

Readers who like to have everything tied up neatly should appreciate the conclusion of the book. After a suitably definitive conclusion, Hiaasen devotes a brief chapter to tidying up loose odds and ends by including a paragraph or two on each of the characters’ and their fates. Among other tantalising titbits, we learn how Nina’s phone-sex career progressed and what happened to the break-dancing dwarves. I really liked this feature as I am someone who appreciates firm conclusions rather than open ended possibilities.

One minor detail that nagged at me was the use of characters’ full names. Throughout the whole novel, Hiaasen frequently refers to characters by their full names, i.e. most times they speak, several times per page. I am not at all sure what this was intended to achieve, unless it was to help establish a certain amount of distance between the characters and Hiaasen’s warnings about the environment. On the whole, I just felt it was a tad irritating, and I still think of the characters as ‘Danny Pogue’ and ‘Molly McNamara’, for instance, which is an unnecessarily lengthy way of thinking! Yes, it’s a miniscule point, so I’ll press on to some potentially more useful information.

I feel it’s important to include a couple of warnings at this juncture. The characters often speak in a vulgar way, (it’s quite revealing that Kingsbury named his main attraction ‘The Wet Willie’,) so there is bad language, although it is used in keeping by specific characters rather than being scattered liberally through the text. Another point to be aware of is that the action is occasionally obscene, although there is no graphic violence or sexual activity; it is slapstick, not stomach-churning. In fact, the more violent the action becomes, the less believable it is. At one point, Pedro beats Joe with his crutch. Hiaasen doesn’t feel the need to drag out the violence either: it is reported and the action moves inexorably onwards. These two injunctions to mean that the novel is more suitable for adult readers, but then, that’s probably clear from the mention of sex phone lines earlier!

It’s probably also worth being aware that Carl Hiaasen’s books are fairly similar in terms of style and subject matter, so if you like/don’t like this one, you’re likely to have a similar reaction to the series as a whole. Even if you love it, you might want to take a moment to consider before reading three in a row.

Conclusions

Whilst most of the action in this novel is entirely plausible and actually of a very serious nature (murder, vandalism, destruction) the way Hiaasen tells the tale emphasises the sheer ridiculousness of it all. Towards the end of the novel one character states that he realises he won’t have achieved very much; he simply wants to save this one corner of his island from one development. He knows that the ongoing war will not be a case of winning or losing but rather a relentless destruction of nature for ‘business’ reasons. It is a credit to Hiaasen’s skill that, despite his character's acceptance of the inevitable, this is never a maudlin work. The sense of comic frothiness continues right until the end, and it’s only when you put the book down that you might wonder where in your local area vital ecosystems and habitats are being destroyed to make some rich blokes richer. ( )

This is my first taste of Carl Hiaasen and I like him. He keeps you going, and of course uses Florida as a background for his prose. Those of us near and native know where he's talking about and we can then join the bizarre characters in the story. ( )

I like Carl Hiaasen for a fun read. This one is just "ok" though. Not high on a recommendation list. ( )

The mystery part was good and funny ( )

Francis X. Kingsbury is one of the sleaziest multi-millionaires in the
state of Florida. He's got a very murky past and can't speak in
complete sentences if his life depended on it. But he's the proud owner
of a theme park called the Amazing Kingdom, one of the most unsafe
places on earth And tourists throng there by the thousands, eager to
pay their money and ride the stupid rides and see the stupid and often
fake attractions. The Amazing Kingdom is home to the rare species
section of the park and the proud owners of the last two surviving
blue-tongued mango voles on earth. The only problem is that there is no
such thing as the blue-tongued mango vole. These are just a couple of
garden variety voles with blue ink regularly applied to their mouths.
The government fell for it, though, and Kingsbury received a $200,000
grant to further study these rare creatures.

All would have been calm, if it hadn't been for the Mothers of
Wilderness, a group of gray haired environmentalists led by a spry old
gal named Molly McNamara, who got wind of Kingsbury's plans to destroy
the last remaining untouched island in the Florida Keys to put up a huge
development and yet another 18 hole golf course. They decide to teach
him a lesson and hire a couple of inept thugs to steal the voles from
their habitat in broad daylight.

The cast of characters here are typical Hiaasen -- Joe Winder, the
oddball journalist who's life seems temporarily derailed when he takes a
job at the Amazing Kingdom in the press department; Pedro Luz, the
chief of security with an acute addiction to steroids, a lousy
complexion, and a serious personality problem; Louie, the hitman from
Jersey; Bud and Danny, the completely inept burglars recruited by the
pistol packing Molly; and of course one of my favorite recurring
characters, Skink, the former Florida governor turned swamp rat. ( )