By Carl Hiaasen . Alfred A. Knopf. The Florida Keys provide the setting.
Trouble is, the ecologically minded grow enraged.
And thereby hangs the tale. An assortment of odd bedfellows, all of them thumpers on the environmental bandwagon, set out to destroy Kingsbury and his developments. Chief among them is Joe Winder, a publicist for the Amazing Kingdom, whose father, a crooked politician, once did a deal for Florida realtors that enabled them to put 6,000 housing units on prime real estate and wiped out an egret rookery and a mangrove estuary. Then there is Molly McNamara, an elderly white-haired activist who not only packs a pistol but who knows how to shoot it with such accuracy that she can cripple an opponent with a wound that will only discommode him for a month or two. The Everglades were drying up, the coral reefs were dying, Lake Okeechobee was choking on man-made poisons and the bluegills were loaded with mercury.