Lucky You

I have not read anything by Carl Hiaasen in a while and forgot how he makes me laugh out loud with his outrageous characters and dialogue. Bode and Chub, two ne'er do wells--also would-be anti-government militia--win the Florida lottery. The only thing is, someone else did, too, and that means they only get $14 m instead of $28 m. They decide to find the other winner and steal the ticket. They accomplish their goal, beating up a proud young black woman, JoLayne Lucks, who works as a veterinary assistant and had wanted to use her winnings to save a piece of land that is soon to be bulldozed by developers. She loves the land and the animals that live there; this is along the same lines as many of Hiaasen's other books with semi-environmental activist themes. Tom Krome, a jaded newspaper reporter sent to cover JoLayne's winning the lottery by his incompetent and idiotic editor, finds himself in the middle of JoLayne's quest to find the two brutal sociopaths and get her ticket back. When Krome goes off the grid, and his house gets blown up with somebody's body inside, the newspaper sends the features editor to check up on Krome. Said editor has a religious conversion, after an encounter with tiny turtles in the town of Grange, a place known for religious miracles and the shysters who create them. Other characters include Krome's actress wife who refuses to divorce him, the waitress from Hooters with whom Chub falls in love, the convenience store clerk who sold JoLayne the winning ticket and then denied it in order to join Chub and Bode in the militia, and the various eccentrics living in the town of Grange. Hiaasen's humor is dark, but the good guys win in the end and this is a hilarious read.