"And I thought WE were scumballs." - Carl Hiaasen's Native Tongue

Mayhem. That’s what’s happening in North Key Largo, Florida. Things have pretty much gotten way out of control; the entire area is one big, accelerating ball of chaos. Tractors are being blown up. The last pair of blue tongued mango voles has been stolen. Cement trucks are exploding. A killer whale has choked to death on a missing scientist. A frisky dolphin is determined to have sexual relations with humans. A loveable little old lady with—ahem—balls of steel calmly shoots not only a couple of burglars in her employ, but also an F.B.I. agent who’s interviewing her. A former reporter’s life is in danger. Willard Scott is interrupting carefully laid plans, and a New Jersey Mafia hitman has suddenly appeared in the area. And would you believe that all of this is just because Francis X. Kingsbury wants to build a golf course? Such is the 100-M.P.H. plot of Carl Hiaasen’s 1991 novel, Native Tongue.

Joe Winder is a burned out former reporter who’s signed on writing press releases for The Amazing Kingdom of Thrills, Kingsbury’s popular theme park in North Key Largo. It’s a hum-drum sort of gig for Winder until the last two blue tongued mango voles are stolen from the park, in broad daylight, by a couple of two-bit burglars.

Unable to put aside his past profession, Winder begins to unravel a whopper of a story—a story involving murder, fraud, and eco-terrorism; Kingsbury plans to bulldoze a natural habitat to build his golf course/community. As he follows the trail deeper and deeper, Winder meets a cast of zany characters, creates enemies, and becomes torn between two hot women.

It’s the oddball personalities that give Native Tongue its charm. From Kingsbury, a scumball real estate developer with a dark secret who rarely speaks in complete sentences, to his head of public relations, Charles Chelsea, a world-class *ss-kisser and yes-man that makes Waylon Smithers seem insubordinate by comparison, Hiaasen’s antagonists keep the story flowing quickly and humorously.

Of course, there are other key players that make those two guys seem almost normal. There’s Molly MacNamara, the rich, elderly chairperson of the Mothers of Wilderness who happens to be quite handy with a pistol. Or for true zaniness, try Skink, the crazed ex-governor of Florida who lives in the sticks, surviving off of road kill, and wears a red plastic radio tracking collar that he pulled off of a dead panther. For my money, however, the true comic value comes courtesy of Pedro Luz, Kingsbury’s personal bodyguard/head of security. Luz is a bodybuilding, disgraced, crooked ex-cop with a steroid problem. He’s become so dependent on the juice that he’s stolen an IV rig; he crushes his steroid pills into powder and then mixes them with IV fluid so that he can get a constant intravenous flow of his muscle-building drugs. Dragging his rig along with him everywhere, when he tires of the needle, the simply unhooks it and begins sucking the steroids straight from the tube.

As Winder descends further into his story to the point where he himself is a participant, you’ll learn the answers to some burning questions. What the hell, exactly, are blue tongued mango voles? Why was Kingsbury able to purchase Orky the Killer Whale so cheaply? Why is Dickie the Dolphin so damn horny? Why is Winder so passionate about ecological matters? And why are the midget actors that portray Uncle Ely’s Elves at the Amazing Kingdom so darn p*ssed off?

Native Tongue is a funny, captivating read that should keep you humorously occupied for a few hours. If you’ve enjoyed reading Tim Dorsey or Dave Barry’s entertaining Florida-based crime novels, you should be more than satisfied with Native Tongue.