Feb 15, 2007 02:04 PM
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(Updated Feb 15, 2007 03:33 PM)
I am a voracious reader and a very shallow one too! That means that I flip pages as if I am participating in a speed reading contest and HAVE to finish the book at the earliest. Of course, I am successful in that motive, the flipside being that you ask me next day what happened in the book, I am clueless. Of course the upside of this flipside is that I can reread the books many times. Even thrillers!
One of the authors whose books I really enjoy picking up over n over is a guy called Carl Hiaasen(finally she comes to the point!;). I just reread his book called Native Tongue and bravely decided to attempt a book review best left to people like Mags, Megha, Sumit and ofcos Priya! Since I have NO idea how to write them, I am just going to try and do it the way understand it!
*The Characters
The strongest point of Hiaasen’s books are amazingly well etched characters* which are endearing and weird in turns, making you cringe in embarrassment, laugh out loud and have a sigh of relief alternately!
Joe Winder – The “hero” of the novel. This journalist has been fighting with almost everyone thanx to very strong ethics and morals which aren’t exactly total positives these days. He *has finally joined as a press release writer for Amazing Kingdom, an amusement park in Florida. He is an avid environmentalist who cannot bear seeing nature being exploited for development.* The fact that his Dad was a developer has lead to scarred childhood.
Charles Chelsea – He is the guy who has hired Joe Winder at Amazing Kingdom. He is the face of this amusement park. *He talks to press and faces the TV cameras. He is someone who has a slight hint of conscience making his life even more difficult in a job that demands complete lack of it!
Francis X Kingsbury – *THE owner of this sprawling Amazing Kingdom. He is originally Frankie King, a low life mobster who on getting caught snitched and got himself enrolled in a witness relocation programme with a glorious new name. Cheating people in simple real estate deals to full blown land grabbing, he eventually had enough money to start the park. **His only ambition in life is to become bigger than Disney!:) This ambition is fueled by trying to ape Disney in the cheapest way possible and *running it down with even cheaper tactics like having a lewd tattoo on his forearm of Minnie Mouse giving a BJ to Mickey Mouse.
Pedro Luz – The *Chief of Security at Amazing Kingdom. He is an ex cop thrown out of forces for all sorts of “wrongful” acts. And that is what makes him so perfect for Frankie! He is obsessed with his body and takes unhealthy doses of steroids and such things to build his body! He has abstained from sex because he read somewhere that semen is a waste of essential body fluids! His body keeps on breaking into ugly warts and acne, but he is just busy admiring his growing bulk. After a point he doesn’t feel pain to an extent that he chews his own foot off when it gets stuck under a car wheel that he can’t push off! Eeks!
Bud Schwartz and Danny Progue – The *two bit burglars who end up becoming unlikely heroes by the end of the book. Bud the smart guy who follows certain ethics even while being a burglar especially one of NOT using guns while robbing! He can think fast. Danny is the exact opposite, the perennial fumbler with foot in his mouth but his heart in the right place.
Molly McNamara – The *feisty rich old lady who is the president of Mothers of Wilderness, *a group of ladies who are fighting to save environment.Molly’ ways are l’il unconventional and hatke and she stuns all with her sheer spunk!
Skink – The most amazing yet the weirdest guy of them all! *He is an ex-Mayor who tried to clean the system and was systemically thrown out of that same system. He has run away for years now and does his bit of work fighting against people destroying the beautiful Florida coastline for their own greedy needs. He is huge, VERY strong, extremely intelligent and well read with long hair, shaggy beard and one fake eye.
There are other important characters like Jim Tile, Skink’s personal guard when he was a Mayor and still trying to protect him by being a part of the police force. There is Nina, Joe’s girlfriend who speaks for those sex phone lines, but has bent of creative n erotic poetry which she sells to other girls who don’t have the brains!Carrie Lainer who works as Robbie the Raccoon at Amazing Kingdom and helps Joe in his eventual fight and is his final love interest.
*The Story
*The book starts with Bud and Danny having stolen a couple of exotic blue tongued Mango Voles from Amazing Kingdom for which they are being paid good$10, 000. Not knowing there are just two rats they throw both of them into tourist cars driving by for fun!
Their benefactor who has requested this robbery is Molly who wants to stop Francis X Kingsbury’s plan to further exploit Florida greens by starting a Golf Course near his already huge Amazing Kingdom.
Joe Winder is the guy whose first piece of writing for the park turns out to be a press release about how Mr. Kingsbury was doing his bit for saving the wildlife by taking care of mango voles, the last two of the species. As he starts investigating about these voles, he realizes ki puri dal hi kaali hai especially after the death of the biologist Koocher who was taking care of those Voles.
When Kingsbury realizes Joe is becoming a troublemaker, he tries to get him killed too! At the last minute he is saved by Skink and soon they join forces to save trees being uprooted for the Falcon Trace Golf Course.
Molly McNamara who till now has terrorized the burglars by shooting their hand and a foot respectively also gets badly beaten up by Pedro, and the burglars stay back to take care of her instead of running away with a change of heart at both ends.
Midway through the book they all get connected to each other in someway or the other working for or against forces who are just trying to earn some more money without worrying about how they can make this a sustainable development.
Through a lot more crazy situations, from unbelievable to pure wicked which lead to the grand finale that makes for a happy ending.
Conitnued in comments section!:(
