FernFolio

Roy Eberhardt has recently moved to Coconut Grove, Florida, from Montana with his parents, and is putting up with the usual nonsense that adolescent kids inflict on newcomers. He eats lunch alone in the cafeteria, except for the occasional presence of Garrett, a skateboarding air head, and is trying to navigate his way past the attentions of Dana Mathison, the school bully.
One morning, Roy looks out the school bus window (his face is being mashed up against it by Dana), and sees a boy streak by on foot. What catches Roy’s attention about the kid is that he’s fast, and he’s running barefoot. When he doesn’t see him in the halls of Coconut Grove’s only middle school, Roy begins to wonder who the runner might be. He starts to watch for him from the school bus, and, when Roy finally spots the runner again, he frees himself from Dana’s strangle hold, darts off the bus and runs after him. After a chase that cuts through neighbourhoods and across a golf course, Roy is knocked unconscious by a flying golf ball.
Back at school, Roy is cross examined by the Vice Principal, who claims he’s broken Dana’s nose, threatened by Dana, and warned off taking any further interest in the mysterious barefooted runner by a rather physically intimidating girl named Beatrice Leep. But Roy refuses to give up on tracking down the kid, further intrigued by Beatrice’s behaviour.
Roy is also following with interest the developments on a building site at the corner of East Oriole and Woodbury. Future home of another Mother Paula’s All-American Pancake House, the site’s being plagued by problems. First, the survey stakes keep getting pulled up. Then alligators turn up in the portable toilets placed on the lot for the construction team.
Roy begins to wonder whether there might be a connection between the barefooted runner and the trouble at the building lot. Soon Roy finds himself making the acquaintance of Mullet Fingers, a fugitive from Juvie Hall, and an overeager new police recruit named Office Delinko. Though these two appear at first to be on opposite sides of the law, both are linked by the nests of three mated pairs of burrowing owls on the Mother Paula’s Pancake House building site.
Carl Hiaasen’s Hoot is a fast-paced adventure with an environmental twist that combines humour with an edgy realism. Though there are no fairy tale endings, there is a satisfying victory over big business and corrupt government. Hiaasen is also the author of Flush and Scat.
FernFolio Editor