It's okay. Others of his are better. ( )

I've read several books by Carl Hiaasen, including several of the Skink series. Skink is an interesting character, although he doesn't play a major role in this one. That role is probably filled mostly by a reporter named Joe Winder along with several supporting players including a senior citizen who is good at playing a batty old woman, but is actually pretty sharp, and good with a gun.

Aside from Skink, there is another fun recurring character who follows him from place to place, a big, black State Trooper named Jim Tile who gets reassigned whenever Skink moves. Jim Tile is a pretty cool character. He meets up with a lot of racists who seem to want to provoke him with racial epithets, but Jim is good at outwardly ignoring them until he doesn't. At other times, he seems to love intimidating them, doing things like eating in places that don't welcome non-whites, and taking his time at it.

The real main character is Florida and its environmental rape by land developers and crooked politicians. Skink was previously an honest governor of Florida, but finally gave up and walked away, disappearing until given up for dead by most people. Jim Tile had worked with him and helped him disappear. ( )

When a crooked amusement park owner in the Florida Keys tries to fake an endangered vole specie Skink appears. Skink is lives in the wilds of Florida and subsists mostly on roadkill. While he looks like a large homeless bum he was once the Governor of Florida. Other characters include Terry Whelper, a former legitimate journalist, who works in PR for the amusement park and his onetime girlfriend who makes a living doing phone sex. Two likable burglars, a steroid crazed security chief, a girl in a racoon costume and an elderly radical environmental activist make up the other characters. ( )

Another fun book from Hiaasen. ( )

An entertaining if odd environmentally-aware crime comedy. I like the style, and I enjoyed the book, but it also felt a bit like environmentalist propaganda. I've got more Hiaasen books on my shelf to read, and I'm definitely going to read more of his stuff, but I wonder now if everything he's written is focused on environmentalism. ( )