If you like weird mysteries set in Florida featuring off the wall characters Lucky You by Carl Hiaasen will probably please.
Hiaasen’s Lucky You follows the story of JoLayne Lucks who just won the loto jackpot. The problem is a redneck white supremacist named Bodean Gazzer won the other half. Bodean decides he and his buddy Chub should get the second winning ticket and cash them in so they can start their own militia.
Krome, a journalist who is more or less down on his luck like all journalists in the Florida weird mystery tradition decides he will help JoLayne get her ticket back and thus get a great story. This mystery being set in Florida, things will not be that simple. JoLayne lives in Grange, Florida where the local business is amateur miracle makers.
To add to this circus, Krome has been trying to serve divorce papers on his wife for some four or five years but Mrs. Krome is so against that that she has decided a loony bin would be a good place to stay for a while. Then Krome quits his job as a journalist over a disagreement about whether JoLayne Lucks is a story or not. This does not stop him from helping her. Even being declared dead does not stop him from helping her.
The kind of humor you can expect in Lucky You by Carl Hiassen is the white supremacist finding out his brand new two-man militia shares the name of a band with three Black players in it so he has to change his militia’s name but not before a wannabe militia member has the initials of the original militia name tattooed on his arm. Subplots include a union pension fund bidding on land JoLayne has her eye on to hide some mob financial shenanigans, a mad judge whose wife Krome slept with doing things like having his law clerk blow up Krome’s house, and a town where everybody seems to be running a scam to fleece religious nuts.
Lucky You by Carl Hiaasen is probably a bit too long for its own good but if you are looking for a very lightweight thriller then you might be lucky.
Lucky You
Carl Hiaasen
2005
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