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Carl Hiaasen, who pens a weekly column for The Miami Herald, certainly follows the adage "Write what you know." While he occasionally covers nationally significant events, Hiaasen generally confines his writings to the fertile territory that is the state of Florida. Readers of Hiaasen's columns know well his passions and viewpoints. His sarcastic commentaries often take aim at such topics as the medical profession, land developers, crooked politicians, gun aficionados, tobacco companies, madcap theme parks and the destruction of Florida's environment. But weekly newspaper pieces are not the end of Hiaasen's caustic observations --- they are only the beginning. In 10 novels written over a span of 20 years, Hiaasen has expanded upon all of these topics in hilarious tales that poke fun at every aspect of life in the Sunshine State.
NATURE GIRL is Hiaasen's 11th novel. While he skewers many familiar targets, there are a few new objects of ridicule for his skillful and entertaining writing. Hiaasen's Florida romps all share common traits: quirky plots, countless screwball characters and an irreverent style that creates laughter on every page. The prime target for his ire in NATURE GIRL is Boyd Shreave, a telemarketer pitching Florida real estate who places a sales call to Honey Santana, thereby setting in motion a chain of events familiar to any Hiaasen aficionado. Anyone who has experienced the pain of a telemarketing call interrupting a quiet and peaceful evening at home can identify with Santana's plot of revenge. She turns the tables on Shreave and lures the unsuspecting pitchman to Florida for a phony tour of nonexistent Florida property.
NATURE GIRL begins with an event not uncommon in a Hiaasen novel: someone dies and someone else tries to dispose of the body. Sammy Tigertail, a fugitive half-breed Seminole, takes a tourist out on his airboat. The tourist is frightened by a harmless water snake and dies of an apparent heart attack. Panic-stricken, Sammy decides to ditch the body somewhere in the Ten Thousand Islands area of Southeast Florida. The cast of characters, as often occurs in a Hiaasen novel, expands exponentially. Shreave has a wife intent on divorce, along with a girlfriend who accompanies Shreave on his ostensible Florida vacation. Eugenie Fonda once achieved fame as the girlfriend of a tabloid murderer.
While Santana is obsessed with her plot to destroy Shreave, she must also fend off the advances of a stalker known only to readers as Mr. Piejack and her drug-running former husband Perry. Add to the mix one Florida State co-ed who falls in love with Sammy Tigertail and a private investigator hired by Shreave's wife to follow him on his tryst with Eugenie, and the pieces to a puzzle that create a picture of hilarity are almost all in place.
Carl Hiaasen is a genius in creating mayhem on the pages of his novels. Characters move in all directions across Florida, and readers may often have difficulty keeping track of their various escapades. In the end, however, everything comes together in a typical Hiaasen conclusion. NATURE GIRL is pure Hiaasen, and his many readers once again will experience the joy of his humor and his easily recognized and human characters.
--- Reviewed by Stuart Shiffman
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