Sick Puppy

Soon Boodle and Stoat's wife, Desie, are fugitives from Florida's nature despoilers (who include the Governor, a "gladhanding maggot," the amusingly slimy Stoat, the human bulldozer Krimmler, the cocaine-importer-turned-developer Clapley, and the hit man Mr. Gash, who's fond of sex with multiple beach bimbos in iguana-skin sex harnesses to the tunes of The World's Most Blood Curdling Emergency Calls). Desie, who has a knack for calamitous romance, is smitten with Twilly, but urges him not to kill any litterbugs or pelican molesters: "Jail would not be good for this relationship." What keeps pure farce at bay in a novel that romps with the abandon of a scent-crazed Labrador is the otherwise charming Twilly's creepy edge of implacable fanaticism. And what redeems the funny/ugly violence from cliché is its colorful bad guys (they're as iridescent as oil slicks), Hiaasen's excellent wit, and the music of his prose. To evoke a drunk asleep on the beach, he adds a pungent detail: "a gleaming stellate dollop of seagull shit decorated his forehead."

Hiaasen is not unflawed. His original eco-terrorist character, ex-Florida governor Clinton "Skink" Tyree, seems like an interloper from the earlier books. But Hiaasen's the master of madcap ensembles (which is partly why the star-vehicle film of his fine book Strip Tease flopped). And even when you can see a chase scene's denouement coming for a beachfront mile, each paragraph packs descriptive delights to keep you going at breakneck pace. --Tim Appelo

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All Customer Reviews
Average Customer Review:
0 of 0 people found the following review helpful:

Sharp commentary and comedy, 2008-08-22
What a gift Hiaasen has given us...Florida and all the beauty of nature and corruption of man presented in a VERY funny book revolving about the real estate development of Toad Island. As others have said, the cast of characters are way over the top and the action starts when an eccentric eco-defender sees a self-centered lobbyist litter out of his car. His fury turns into stalking, dog-napping and a romance with the wife. The lobbyist is working hard on getting a bridge funded to expedite the development of the island, but, wait...not if our eco-hero, Twilly Spree has anything to do with it. The plot twists back and forth, who will win in the end, and how. Well, justice prevails, but not as expected. This is no real happy ending book, and several bad guys get their just desserts. That was a bit of a downer, since no one seemed to be redeemed. So, if you are looking for funny social commentary and like to know more about the political process and eco-system of Florida, set right up and read this one.


0 of 0 people found the following review helpful:

Read these themes before, in much more textured and novel form..., 2008-07-27
One part distilled Floridian weirdness, one part Kurt Vonnegut simplicity and wit, and one part John Irving fringe sexuality, the story gains speed but never takes off, trapped in a house of literary echoes done much better elsewhere. A hitman who loves 911 calls put to classical music? A land developer without a conscience? A painfully ideological twentysomething in search of love via an older woman? These are familiar extremists without extreme texture, and none of them benefit from bumping into the others. The strokes are too broad for any real humanity; only those with a Florida address could find earnestness in this lukewarm survey of the state's primary players.


0 of 0 people found the following review helpful:

Same-Old-Same-Old, 2008-07-10
Florida's a big state -- about 16 million people and you can't mention them all in a 300-page book. So why not mention their hometowns?

That's what Hiassen is up to in Sick Puppy, and it reminds me of nothing so much as a church newsletter that tries to get the congregation's attention by shoe-horning everybody's name into it. Like "personalized" junk mail, such as from Publisher's Clearing House.

Sure, this is a story with a lot of motoring in it and naturally the characters have to stop for gas and stay somewhere at night, and, true, one town name is as good as another, so why not use real town names? Right. But then how come it sounds so much like he's trying to drum up business? Making sure, no matter what happens, at least the book will sell in Florida -- at least to the imbeciles that will buy it because their town's name is mentioned.

Maybe all of this stuff is like this. Maybe all of those creepy New England towns Stephen King writes into his stuff really exist.

Really, this Hiassen stuff is the same-old-same-old. Every character is a "character", not one of them the slightest bit believable, and, naturally, each of them either good or evil. I don't know about you, but I've long, long been weary of the my-kooky-family-ha-ha-ha threads of James Thurber and John Irving.

And what's strangest of all -- for a reasonable and even-tempered person like me -- Twilly's homicidal environmentalism is treated with sympathy. I'm not sure if this is a ham-fisted attempt at moral ambiguity or I'm just so hopelessly square that I just don't get it -- that nothing, absolutely nothing, is more important than the "environment" (and I say "environment", but I mean "the whims of the idle and stupid: the Eco-kooks"). Maybe even noting that Twilly blew up a bank or killed a trash-dumper is nitpicking. This spoiled crackpot is one of the most revolting figures I've read about in fiction, and I'm hard to alienate.





1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

It made me smile, 2008-07-10
I smiled as I read this book. I laughed out loud many times. I liked it.
My review isn't much to go on, but it's my opinion and when you boil down all the crap in all reviews, whether good or bad, that's all they are...just subjective opinions. My opinion is all that matters...trust me. HA!



0 of 0 people found the following review helpful:

Fresh, 2008-07-09
This was a fresh change for me and mostly good fun. The author has a terrific imagination and had me laughing out loud a few times. It concerns a one-man eco-terrorist, named Twilly Spree and how he bites off more than he can chew when he stops going after individuals and starts going after corporations/governers. It seemed to take a while to get going because the author has a lot of 'setting up' to do at the start, I'd recommend perservering. Now and again the author overdoes things, like with a two-legged ocelot and even with the main characters name, but I willed the suspension of disbelief; it is, after all, meant to be lunacy.

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