Kick Ass

A public service to his many fans, this compendium of Miami Herald columns by best-selling novelist Carl Hiaasen (Lucky You, 1997, etc.) reveals an angry, alert civic muckraker in the pugilistic vein of Mencken or Royko. Though best known for his ribald crime fiction, with its meticulous universe of South Florida idiocy and venal conspiracy, Hiaasen cut his teeth as an investigative reporter, and this spirit is strong in both his chosen subjects and his wry attention to unforgiving evidentiary detail. As editor Stevenson notes, the collections thrust, which she constructed by sifting through Hiaasens 1300-plus columns, was to present his advocacy of realistic growth and decent government in Florida. Along the way Hiaasen stops to gut innumerable big fishcrooked politicians, rogue cops, insensate tourists, swollen developerswithin a rough chronology reaching back to the cocaine-crazed Reagan '80s.