Skink: No Surrender, by Carl Hiaasen
Look, it's Carl Hiaasen, writing a Young Adult novel about Skink, a former governor of Florida who has truly gone rogue. What do you expect?
Something short, witty, and easy to read. Something funny, with hi-jinks and bizarre characters. Something in which the good guys prevail, and the bad guys get punished, often in inevitable, outlandish ways.
Check. Check. And check.
Hiaasen is the chronicler of the Florida man. If he didn't create the trope, he certainly spread it into popular culture.
And Skink is the definitive Florida man. A fearless loner, perhaps insane in the popular meaning, and one who doles out his own brand of justice. He's part man, part myth. He's always there, loves children, animals, and nature, and despises those who defile any of them.
In No Surrender, Skink teams with Richard to find the 14-year-old's missing cousin, who has either run away or been kidnapped. Their harrowing but amusing adventures -- well, amusing for us, maybe, if not for them -- get wilder as the story winds its way along the north Florida coast and into the Choctawhatchee River.
Enjoy it while you can.
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