Product Description
Grange, Florida is famous for its miracles: the Weeping Fiberglass Madonna, the Road Stain Jesus--and JoLayne Lucks, recent winner of the state's $28 million lottery! There's only one problem--someone else just never learned to share. So, when JoLayne's ticket is mysteriously stolen, the chase is on through the Sunshine State--wreaking the kind of hilarious mayhem Hiaasen is famous for.
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 Wacky, Entertaining ( shalladeguzman )
Characters with issues, that's what makes the folks that populate this novel intriguing--because they may just be the very people you walk passed in the street, you never know...
Screwballish, nutty. Anyway, it's entertaining in a disturbing way.
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 Not My Favorite
After reading a few other Hiaasen novels I must rate this as my least favorite. It's readable but I prefer Overboard and Tourist Season.
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Hilarious! ( christytfrench )
Grange, Florida is a small, out-of-the-way community known for its religious miracles, from the weeping Madonna to the stigmata man with holes in his palms that do not heal. Not to mention the road stain in the form of Jesus and the woman who visits every day in her wedding dress. And now, one of their own, JoLayne Lucks, has won one-half of the state's lottery of $28 million. JoLayne works part-time as a veterinarian's assistant and plans to use her lottery winnings to buy and maintain wooded acreage in danger of being developed into a shopping mall.
The other half of the lottery winnings belong to Bode Grazzer, a short man convinced NATO forces are lining up in the Bahamas ready to invade America, and his sidekick Chub, a paint-sniffing mercenary wannabe. Chub and Bode, needing money to begin their own supremacist organization so they can defend the white man when America is invaded, decide to steal the other lottery ticket. They break into JoLayne's home, beat her up and take off with the ticket. On the way to the lottery office, they recruit a convenience store clerk known for his lack of cognitive abilities and take hostage a Hooters waitress Chub has fallen in love with.
To JoLayne's aid comes Tom Krome, an embittered former investigative reporter now working for a small newspaper covering social events. Tom's editor sends him to Grange to write a story about the lottery winner, but before he even pulls out his notepad, Tom finds himself in cahoots with JoLayne and hot on the trail of Bode and Chub. All six end up on a small island in Florida Bay, where a confrontation develops over the two lottery tickets and where two will remain behind forever.
Carl Hiaasen is a master at developing wacky characters and zany plots and dialogue that will leave the reader in stitches throughout the entire book. This is a book all readers will enjoy as they follow the madcap antics of these screwball characters.
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 Another amuaing romp ( allie2026 )
JoLayne Lucks ironically, with a surname like that, has just won a half share ($14 million dollars) in the Florida state lottery. So far, so good. What JoLayne doesn't know is that the other winning ticket is held by two paranoid, white supremacist survivalists who want to steal her ticket and claim the entire $28M prize in order to finance their fledgling survivalist organisation, the White Clarion Aryans. The supremacists track JoLayne down, rough her up, and take off with her winning ticket. Enter Tom Krome, cynical feature writer for "The Register", who teams up with JoLayne to track aforementioned white supremacists down in order to retrieve the winning ticket. What follows is a very enjoyable romp ranging from Grange, Florida (a hotbed of eccentrics and dodgy Christian "miracle" shrines) to an uninhabited island in the Florida Keys. The book could have done with better editing, as there are too many tangential characters who take momentum away from the main plot of the tracking of the thieving white supremacists. Hiaasen's berserk sense of humour shines through, however, and the chief subplot satirising the Christian "miracle" industry is quite a hoot! Another good novel by Hiaasen, sure to be enjoyed by just about all who read it.
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Another good one by Mr. Hiaasen
First, let me say that after reading two of Carl Hiaasen's books (Skinny Dip and Lucky You) I am now a fan and am currently reading "Sick Puppy". His style seems to introduce the "who-dunnit" first and leaves you itching to know why the bad guy did what he did and how he gets what he deserves... and they get it in the most unique and unexpected ways! They tend to get what's coming to them through their own screw-ups, stupidity, fate or maybe all three...but it's always funny and leaves you thinking, "Well, the idiot had it coming." The good guys are interesting with pasts of their own. Beware...buying and reading one of Mr. Hiaasen's books may result in the urge to read more. Money saving tip: Buy one of Amazon's used books...I've had great experience with this. The books have been in excellent condition...leaving me with the means to buy more!
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