Saturday, February 14, 2009

Scat

Scat by Carl Hiaasen
Nick and his friend Marta decide to investigate when a mysterious fire starts near a Florida wildlife preserve and an unpopular teacher goes missing. David Pogue, book reviewer for the New York Times writes "What’s truly amazing is how much mileage Hiaasen gets here from mining the same narrow niche. Every novel is an eco-­mystery set in Florida. Every plot features a greedy businessman (with a dumb-as-bricks henchman) bent on getting rich at the expense of Florida wildlife. Each plot is energized by improbable and hilarious action sequences." Read the rest of the review from the NYT Sunday Book Review.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

...This well-written and smoothly plotted story, with fully realized characters, will certainly appeal to mystery lovers.

Anonymous said...

...I think Hiaasen does an excellent job of creating believable characters and situations and he's very careful to populate his books with realistic parents with problems, but who are caring.This was a very entertaining read while I was ill and I learned lots about Florida ecology at the same time. Recommended.

Anonymous said...

...a little slow in pacing and the character types might be recognizable to experienced readers, but fans of Hoot and Flush (2002, 2005) will not be disappointed by this funny, believable, environmentally friendly tween thriller.

librarycat said...

I was a little disappointed with this one. It seemed like "Hoot" with a panther instead of an owl - not a very original story. The characters were stereotypical and exaggerated, such as the mean and nasty biology teacher, the idiotic substitute teacher, and the greedy, evil owner of the petroleum company. And what about "Twilly", the mysterious independently wealthy black-ops enviromnentalist commando who taped a man to a tree and spray- painted him orange? Over the top. I'll give this one 3 stars ***