A few years ago, Barry reviewed a Carl Hiassen book
titled Lucky You. I had not read him at that time. I still have not. Barry is
back with another review of a Carl Hiassen book. This time he reviews Nature
Girl. Make sure to go over and check out all the reading suggestions at Patti’s
blog.
NATURE GIRL (2006) by
Carl Hiaasen
Reviewed by Barry
Ergang
On the first day of working
the airboat concession on the Big Cypress reservation, half-blood Seminole
Sammy Tigertail acquires a very drunk customer named Wilson who dies of a heart
attack while on the boat ride. Advised by his uncle to dispose of the body
somewhere not on the reservation,
Sammy does so, then decides that it would be prudent to disappear for a while.
Honey Santana, who has been
known to have anger issues, among several others, has just quit her job at the
fish market owned by Louis Piejack after he groped her and she responded by
fighting back. At dinner she tells her twelve-year-old son Fry that she’s thinking
about earning money by doing the same thing one of her girlfriends is doing:
taking tourists on kayaking eco-tours in and around Florida’s Ten Thousand
Islands.
In Texas, telemarketer Boyd
Shreave, using the surname Eisenhower, interrupts Honey Santana’s dinner hour
and tries to pitch her on a Florida real estate deal. When she says she’s not
interested, berates him for bothering people, and calls him “a professional
pest,” Shreave fails to do what he knows he should: just hang up and call
another prospect. Instead, he says something grossly insulting and disconnects
the call. This leaves Honey with the unshakeable determination to get back at
him somehow.
Lily Shreave knows her
husband Boyd is having an affair and hires a private detective named Dealey to
obtain photographic evidence for divorce proceedings. Boyd’s paramour is his
telemarketing co-worker, Eugenie Fonda. Dealey gets the photos, one of which is
very graphic, but this isn’t enough for Lily. She offers Dealey a great deal of
money for even more explicit evidence.
When Louis Piejack is brutally
assaulted, Honey is sure her ex-husband Perry Skinner is behind it. Fry tells
Honey how Piejack suffered further indignities at the hands of paramedics and
surgeons, and she eventually pays a sympathetic visit to him at his home.
Piejack misinterprets this as sexual interest on Honey’s part and begins
stalking her.
How these disparate plot
elements and quirky, fleshed-out characters ultimately converge on Dismal Key
in the Everglades to satisfy their aims or fail to makes for a hugely
entertaining, neatly paced comic novel by Carl Hiaasen, whose satirical skills
have been compared to Mark Twain, James Thurber, and S.J. Perelman. Readers
with a taste for sometimes skewed humor, who aren’t offended by some instances
of raw street language, will likely devour it as I did. Then again, this is the
eleventh novel by Hiaasen I’ve read, and I have yet to be disappointed.
© 2017 Barry Ergang
Some of Derringer Award-winner Barry Ergang’s work is available at Smashwords and Amazon.
1 comment:
My wife just finished reading Carl Hiaasen's BAD MONKEY and loved it. I may have to read some of the Hiaasens I have stacked up.
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