Will I love Native Tongue?

Hiaasen is always very funny. Nice light, enjoyable read.

If rolling on the floor laughing your ass off is your thing, then Carl Hiaasen is for you. This was my entry into whack-job Florida crime capers, and it still puts me in stitches.

The carousel of nuttiness starts spinning when two rare “blue-tongued voles” are nicked from Amazing Kingdom of Thrills, a low-rent theme park. Bouncing off each other is a crowd of madcap and/or menacing characters. The racketeer park owner. The two boneheaded thieves. An enviro-radical granny. An oversexed dolphin. A security chief hopped up on steroids. An actress who plays a goofy park critter. A gonzo former… show more.

I love just about everything Hiaasen has ever written, but I have read his early works over and over again. He’s a master of plotting, storytelling, and dialogue. It’s hard to go wrong with any of his books, but I’m picking Native Tongue as his most outright funny. A deft skewering of the Florida theme park industry (as well as many other aspects of our society), this book was my ur-text when I first set out to design FunJungle, the theme park at the heart of my first book series.