Scat (Carl Hiaasen)

Scat
Carl Hiaasen
Knopf
Fiction, MG General Fiction/Humor
**** (Good)

DESCRIPTION: The day Duane "Smoke" Scrod Jr and biology teacher Bunny Starch squared off in front of the entire classroom, Nick and his friend Marta knew it wouldn't end well. Starch was the harshest teacher in the school, rumored to keep pet snakes and a taxidermy collection at home, and Duane... well, any boy who insists on being called "Smoke" and talks back to someone like Starch, even biting her pencil in half and swallowing the pieces, is surely up to no good.
Smoke doesn't even show up the next day for the class trip to Black Vine Swamp, a wildlife preserve in the Florida swamps, where Nick hopes he might finally see the critically endangered Florida panther. But then a wildfire chases them out - and Starch, a teacher who has never missed a day of class in her entire teaching career, disappears.
Did Smoke finally snap and live up to his nickname? Were his threats against Starch more than just bluff? And what was the strange, tannish shape Nick caught on video shortly before the suspicious fire broke out? As he and Marta investigate, they find themselves involved in a tale as tangled as the vines in the swamp, a tale of broken homes and mistaken assumptions and illegal prospecting and self-styled ecoterrorists... not to mention a critically endangered big cat.

REVIEW: I've previously read (and greatly enjoyed) Hiaasen's Chomp, another story set in the Florida wilderness, with a young boy and girl encountering many strange animals and stranger characters. Scat has a similar feel, with two young protagonists surrounded by quirky people and nasty villains and Florida's strange wildlife... a feel so similar I couldn't help sensing a formula behind the story, one that hampered my overall suspension of disbelief. Nick's also a less intelligent main character; with his father recently maimed in the Iraq War, he decides to bind his own right arm and develop left-handedness - an admirable act of solidarity with his one-armed father, but one that makes zero sense when he and Marta are in very dangerous situations, and he doesn't even think to increase the chances of survival by freeing his dominant hand. (But, then, the adults are a bit brainless now and again, too, more caricature than solid characters. Skirting spoilers, I'm also not sure I bought a later plot development involving a trained bloodhound.) Hiaasen writes with love and authenticity (and visible agony) about the highly endangered Florida wilderness, and the peculiar people could be amusing in small doses, but overall I didn't feel it came together quite as well as Chomp did.

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