Lucky You
Carl Hiaasen
Warner Books
483 pages
Carl Hiaasen is known for his wild tales featuring over-the-top yet believable characters put in extremely weird circumstances. Striptease with Demi Moore is based on one of his novels. This makes for a fun, light, easy to read mystery bordering on the tall tale. Lucky You is in that vein but not the best of Hiaasen catalogue. Kindle Lucky You
JoLayne Lucks lives in Grange, Florida, a small town with little to show for it aside from a Virgin Mary statue who cries tears that smell like Charlie perfume, a guy who drilled stigmatas in both his hands, and a woman in a bride outfit who worships the image of statue she sees in the road in front of her house. JoLayne plays the lottery and wins 14 million dollars. The problem is there is another winning ticket belonging to Bodean Gazzer, head of a two-man milicia who is also the only white supremacist who can’t bring himself to say the N word.
Tom Krome is a journalist whose wife is very good at avoiding getting her divorce papers. He is asked by his editor to do a story on Jo Layne. When he arrives in Grange, Bodean has stolen JoLayne’s winning ticket. This causes a wild chase where JoLayne and Krome team up to outwit two white supremacist nitwits.
Granted, there are a lot of weird and funny characters and the story is as over the top as you would expect from a Carl Hiaasen thriller. The problem is the story gets bogged down and you start skipping passages here and there to get to the end. If you are a Hiaasen fan, you will enjoy Lucky You but it is not the wild thriller I would recommend to those who want to discover this Florida writer. If you like Hiaasen, we recommend Tim Dorsey or Lawrence Shames
Other Carl Hiaasen books we have reviewed: Razor Girl Star Island