Synopses & Reviews
Readers who love Carl Hiaasen's off-the-wall novels won't want to miss this outrageous, eclectic collection of his notorious Miami Herald columns. His unique and passionate essays prove that the facts can indeed be stranger than fiction...
Review
"A one-of-a-kind literary achievement....As you read this collection of lively and well-reported pieces...it quickly becomes evident that the author has been able to find most of the raw material for his fiction right in his own backyard....Illuminated by all the wit and keen descriptive powers of his fiction." Salon.com
Review
"Carl Hiaasen is one of Americas finest novelists. His newspaper column is another side of the same talent, examining with a corrosive writers eye the outrageous carnival of southern Florida. The inhabitants are all here: thieves, conmen, and hustlers, perfumed swine and oiled mannequins, legal swindlers and patriotic crooks, executioners and lap dancers, and yes, even an occasional hero...a splendid collection." Pete Hamill
Review
"Reminiscent of the snarky, opinionated newspaper articles of the great Mark Twain, Hiaasens columns are finely crafted little gems." Booklist
Review
"A south Florida native, Hiaasen laments the problems created by the incredible surge in population in the area since his youth, notably the destruction of natural swamplands and many native species. Although written for a specific time and place and tinged with local flavor, Hiaasens columns demonstrate a talent for expressing frustration with the status quo that will resonate well beyond the Miami city limits. He writes with an old-time columnists sense of righteous rage and an utterly current and biting wit." Publishers Weekly
Review
"A public service to his many fans, this compendium of Miami Herald columns...reveals an angry alert civic muckraker in the pugilistic vein of Mencken or Royko....Hiaasen cut his teeth as an investigative reporter, and this spirit is strong in both his chosen subjects and his wry attention to unforgiving evidentiary detail....A truly funny writer....Such columns, like his fiction, reveal Hiaasen as a crystalline, pitiless seer of human weakness and in much the same vein as his Floridian forebears, Charles Willeford and Harry Crews. Deeply satisfying, both for what it reveals of the serious priorities of a supposedly light novelist and for the outrageous epic of Florida profiteering and entropy within." Kirkus Reviews
Review
A collection of over 200 of Hiaasen's "Miami Herald" columns--written with the same dark humor and satirical wit as his fiction--evokes the disastrously flawed paradise of modern South Florida, its developers, con men, crooks, and cops.
About the Author
CARL HIAASEN is a syndicated columnist for the Miami Herald and the author of many bestselling novels, including Lucky You, Strip Tease, and Tourist Season. His most recent book, Sick Puppy, is a New York Times bestseller.