Flush review

2006.03.14 — Culture | Books | Fiction | by Derek Jensen

I've enjoyed Elmore Leonard and Dave Barry from time to time over the years, but I had never tried Carl Hiaasen. All three are Florida writers who enjoy a good mystery and lot of oddball characters. Given my recent need to fill several idle hours of driving each week, I picked up Hiaasen's Flush on CD to give it a try. Let me say first that I did not know that Carl Hiassen had started writing books for adolescents. Seriously. It's a kids' book.

Almost nothing on the box suggests that this is children's literature. In fact, I didn't even realize it was a kids' book until about half-way thru. I'm not sure if that is good or bad or if it reflects more poorly on me or on the author, but there you have the unvarnished truth.

The fine print at the bottom of the back of the box mentions that the book can be found in the Knopf Books for Young Readers Library. That the only hint anywhere, other than, I suppose, the Seussian cover art, that the story is G-rated for a general audience. The narrator of the story is a young kid, perhaps 13 or 14 (I don't think his age is ever actually mentioned) named Noah Underwood. The adventure is his, along with his younger sister Abbey, with whom he has an unlikely cozy friendship.

Deceptively, the story starts out discussing Noah's father, the impulsive Payne Underwood, who has landed himself in jail after sinking an Indian casino boat run in a crooked fashion by a non-Indian who was pumping the contents of the toilets into directly into the water and letting it foul the beach. This is all very promising, but when Dad gets out of jail, it is the kids who continue the investigation, trying to catch the polluters in the act.

Aside from the characters, there are clues in the writing that the story is geared toward a young audience. Hiaasen frequently over-describes things, such as the handle of a motor boat engine, that adults would take for granted but kids need extra information about. He naturally keeps the language clean, altho there is a fair amount of mild violence of the sort where people end up with black eyes or get conked on the head. Having no experience with Hiaasen before, I had no way of knowing if this sort of thing was typical of him.

Hiaasen goes too far in some ways, running into After School Special territory at times. The inclusion of bullies seems cliched and gratuitous, and the resolution in which they apologize is ridiculous.

The mother is a common scold of the sort normally found only in Hardy Boys novels. Her husband may be impetuous but he was right, and I desperately wanted him or, better still, their daughter, to tell her off. Their cause was obviously real and important and therefore worth a little inconvenience. It's the sort of thing that right-thinking mothers join community groups to fight. This one wants a divorce after her husband is interviewed on TV. Grounds for divorce: my husband fights injustice somewhat recklessly, which I find socially embarrassing.

Still, the characters—especially the seedier ones—are engaging and interesting. There is a fair amount of humor, altho not as much as I hoped for. The dialog rings true, more or less, even for the kids. And the characters express the right amount of fear and anger (and disgust) at the appropriate moments. There's no real mystery, tho—the crooks are identified in the first few paragraphs and there is never any doubt of their guilt. Because of this, the story winds up being something of a Scooby Doo plot.

After a fairly fast-paced run up, the resolution is rather overly drawn out. Once the basic conflict is resolved, Hiaasen can't seem to let his characters go. There's a final setback of little consequence and a personal resolution of no consequence at all. For a writer who has won such praise for his adult fiction (or fiction for adults, or whatever), this part seems inexpertly told. Of all things I expected to be smooth in a children's book by an acclaimed fiction writer, it was a concise and clever wrap-up. This one plods.

As a book for adults, the story is too simple and the characters too familiar. As a book for kids, it is engaging and probably rather exciting. Plus it uses the word "poop" quite a lot, which is rather funny in itself.

I will try other Carl Hiaasen books (I have a lot more driving to do), but not from the children's shelf.

I listened to the unabridged audio CD version, read by Michael Welch, a 17-year-old actor and a very good narrator who does well with characters ranging from 11 to 60.

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