Where’s Skink? Long time readers of Carl Hiaasen will be turning the pages of this tropical romp looking for him to make an appearance from around a bush or in the light of an evening fire. He and Honey Santana (Born to Be Wild/My Way) would be the perfect team to restore some common decency to the Florida coastline. Despite the Skink’s absence, Hiaasen has populated this fast read with enough uniquely Floridian characters to make you question your future vacation plans anywhere near the Sunshine State.
Honey (18 and Life/You Can’t Hurry Love) is disturbed at dinner with her precocious son Fry by telemarketer Boyd Shreave. Boyd mistakenly insults her, setting off her relentless plan to teach him some common decency. Not only will Honey (Too Fast for Love/Giant Steps) set up a shell of an adventure company, she will lure Boyd and his mistress to Florida, put them in kayaks and paddle them out to one of hundreds of tiny islands. Once there Honey (She’s Beautiful/Cat Scratch Fever) just knows that a simple lecture on how people are to be treated will succeed in turning the “greedhead” around.
If only it were that simple. Hiaasen’s novels inevitably involve the intersection of many lives and their entangling threads. Sammy Tigertail is a half-Seminole who is trying to find his identity while being haunted by the ghost of a tourist who had the audacity to die of a heart attack when struck by small water snake as Sammy took him on a high speed boat ride. Chasing Honey (Star Spangled Banner!/something Afro-Cuban that she can’t quite identify) is Louis Piejack, a filthy deviant whose smell precedes every appearance on the pages of the book and a walking warning against sexual harassment at work. Fry’s father Perry, Gillian the amorous coed, and Eugenie the mistress all find themselves entangled in Honey’s ( Mustang Sally / Hot Rod Lincoln) plan as it goes awry.
Nature Girl is a good read but not Hiaasen’s best. The characters are memorable more for their oddities than for their personalities and, while everyone gets what they deserve when the last page turns, much of the action is standard Hiaasen-Florida. Of all of his works, Nature Girl is also Hiaasen’s most explicit. The physical intertwining of Boyd and Eugenie is given great detail, perhaps to support his wife’s prurient desires to have the action recorded. Perhaps a little more can be left to the imagination next time Carl.
Oh, the song’s in Honey’s head will become the songs in your head. Be warned.
LOVE | ACCEPT | FORGIVE 