Carl Hiaasen
Carl Hiaasen (1953 - ) is a Florida-born journalist, essayist, and novelist who has both embodied and transcended his native state. He embodies it by knowing it as well as any living writer, with the possible good company of Dave Barry. He transcends it by possessing the ability and artistry to view it with critical distance. He can work up a powerful passion of iconoclasm, a muckraker’s ferocious energy in going after the criminals, especially in environmental concerns. Simultaneously, however, he is a careful and fair observer of how the strange state of Florida works from day to day.
In my many years’ experience with the state (I still have family in Sarasota), I have traveled it north to south, east to west, Hiaasen captures it as well as Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings and John D. Macdonald did. His skill at creating colorful characters and winging wild plots with gusto has disguised sometimes his remarkable writing. Up here in central Pennsylvania he is one of my bestselling “mystery” writers, suggesting that good writing has no regional limitations.
Please note that I carry all his adult fiction, his columns from his long career at the Miami Herald, and his fine young adult novels.
Paradise Screwed: Selected Columns of Carl Hiaasen
Paradise Screwed: Selected Columns of Carl Hiaasen
"Takes readers on a head-shaking romp through a south Florida that they won't find in any tourist brochure. . . . Hiaasen's writing is fearless and the targets endless: politicians, municipal employees, judges, lobbyists, zoning boards, evangelists, athletic franchises, environmental scofflaws, Disney, the NRA, Big Tobacco. . . . Pulls no punches and keeps his sense of humor and outrage firmly intact."--Publishers Weekly
"These sharp, amusing pieces confirm Hiaasen's status as a bird so rare--the humorous popular novelist with an acutely critical social perspective--that he's practically an endangered species."--Kirkus Reviews
"He writes about politics and politicians, crime and criminals, ordinary people and extraordinary people, and a lot of just plain south Florida weirdness. . . . Along with Kick Ass, this is one of the best collections of occasional journalism published in recent years."--Booklist (starred review)