The Amazing Kingdom of Thrills has made Francis X. Kingsbury of South Florida a wealthy man. But Francis, or Frankie the Ferret as he is known to some folks up north who would really like to track him down, has dreams of rivaling the big Florida amusement parks. So he is building a golf course next to his park. Never mind that he is tearing down critical habitat and uprooting native trees and plants. Never mind that his golf course plans to dump waste water near one of the few coral reefs in the area.
Still there are a few people who would like to keep a least a bit of Florida environmentally healthy. One of them is Skink, the ex-governor and current wild man who lives in the back country and eats road kill. The other is Joe Winder who likes fishing off that reef that Frankie's development is threatening and who happens to work for Frankie in the park's public relations department.
When a park employee turns up dead under suspicious circumstances, Winder senses a cover-up that centers around the park's star exhibit: the last two living Blue-Tongued Mango Voles, who are in a captive breeding program intended to bring the voles back from the brink of extinction, similar to the Dusky Seaside Sparrow program at Disney World: Washington Post article.. (Frankie has a bug in his ear about Disney World and fancies himself a rival to the giant park in Orlando.) Unfortunately the two voles get kidnapped by an environmental group who wants to use them to blackmail Frankie into halting the golf course development.
Another entry in Hiaasen's Florida saga, this one seemed more cohesive to me than some of his other novels. The plot is less convoluted and doesn't seem to have so many sidetracks that can make the reader feel a bit lost at times. Skink, of course, makes his usual appearance, acting in this story as a kind of deus ex machina, enacting justice on baddies and moving behind the scenes.
I liked this story a lot. It was not so complex as some of his stories can be and everything wraps up very nicely. He even includes a fun afterword where we get to see how the various characters (who are not killed off) end up. Very enjoyable story.
Review by Publishers Weekly.
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