Fever Beach by Carl Hiaasen

 

I figured while I was reading reliably good authors, I should read this. Turns out it's really good--maybe a little less wacky in some ways than some of Hiaasen's more recent novels, and one of the mains feels like maybe a little bit of a lift from Tim Dorsey, but none of those keep this from being a blistering blowtorch of satire. Hiaasen's typical interests are here: Florida's environment and the corrupt politicians who seem intent on destroying it, mostly, though tourists and national politics come in for some snark. The ending isn't exactly happy, there's some sense of hopelessness about the larger-scale systemic problems, but the outcomes are about as good as the less corrupt characters could have asked for--given that satire comes from a place of anger and hope, an unrelieved grim ending might not be entirely apt. There might be a character or three from Hiaasen's other novels appearing here, but you don't really need to know them for the novel to work.