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.
The Downhill Lie: A Hacker's Return to a Ruinous Sport
The Downhill Lie: A Hacker's Return to a Ruinous Sport
Filled with harrowing divots, deadly doglegs, and excruciating sandtraps, The Downhill Lie is a hilarious chronicle of mis-adventure that will have you rolling with laughter.
Bestselling author Carl Hiaasen wisely quit golfing in 1973. But some ambitions refuse to die, and as the years passed and the memories of slices and hooks faded, it dawned on Carl that there might be one thing in life he could do better in middle age than he could as a youth. So gradually he ventured back to the rolling, frustrating green hills of the golf course, where he ultimately--and foolishly--agreed to compete in a country-club tournament against players who can actually hit the ball.