To Read: Nature Girl

I don't read a lot of thrillers. I usually prefer either a straightforward, whodunnit-style mystery or an all-out, supernatural horror tale. But I suspect that might be because I haven't been exposed to the right thrillers. Carl Hiaasen's Nature Girl could change that.

Hiaasen is known for writing quirky characters and Nature Girl doesn't sound like an exception to that. It has an unhinged heroine who plans to kidnap and terrorize an innocent telemarketer (if there is such a thing) and his girlfriend, a tabloid murderer, a sexually harrassing stalker, a drug-runner, a teenager who's over-protective of his mom, a half-Native American alligator-wrestler, and an accidental hostage: all of whom are connected to each other and converge in an isolated section of the Florida Everglades called Dismal Key.

That plot has the making of a really interesting story in anyone's hands, but in Hiaasen's it promises to be as funny as it is thrilling.