Flush [Paperback]

Carl Hiaasen (Author)

Book Description

Release date: August 14, 2007 | Age Range: 10 and up

Bestselling novelist Carl Hiaasen is back with another hysterical mystery adventure for young readers, set in the Florida Keys.

You know it's going to be a rough summer when you spend Father's Day visiting your dad in the local lockup.

Noah's dad is sure that the owner of the Coral Queen casino boat is flushing raw sewage into the harbor–which has made taking a dip at the local beach like swimming in a toilet. He can't prove it though, and so he decides that sinking the boat will make an effective statement. Right. The boat is pumped out and back in business within days and Noah's dad is stuck in the clink.

Now Noah is determined to succeed where his dad failed. He will prove that the Coral Queen is dumping illegally . . . somehow. His allies may not add up to much–his sister Abbey, an unreformed childhood biter; Lice Peeking, a greedy sot with poor hygiene; Shelly, a bartender and a woman scorned; and a mysterious pirate–but Noah's got a plan to flush this crook out into the open. A plan that should sink the crooked little casino, once and for all.


From the Hardcover edition.

Editorial Reviews

From School Library Journal

Grade 5-8–Noah and his sister, Abbey, are more understanding of their volatile dad's latest arrest than their mother, who begins talking of divorce. Dad sank the Coral Queen, a casino boat on a Florida Key because, he alleges, its owner, Dusty Muleman, has been illegally dumping raw sewage into the local waters. Soon enough the kids begin trying to gather proof that will vindicate their father and put the casino out of business. The colorful cast includes a drunken lout named Lice who disappears before he can be persuaded to testify against Dusty, his former boss. His rough-around-the-edges girlfriend, Shelly, comes through, though, helping the siblings dump dye in the boat's holding tanks, which finally brings the matter to court. Dusty's son, Jasper, is a chip off the old block, threatening and beating Noah on several occasions until he and, later, Abbey are rescued by a mysterious stranger who turns out to be their grandfather, long ago thought to have died in South America, probably while involved in drug smuggling. As the tale ends, he's back to Colombia to settle old scores. The plot would practically disappear if any one of the major characters had a cell phone, but the environmental story is front and center and readers will be hooked as the good guys try to do the right thing. This quick-reading, fun, family adventure harkens back to the Hardy Boys in its simplicity and quirky characters.–Joel Shoemaker, Southeast Junior High School, Iowa City, IA
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Booklist

Gr. 5-8. Hiaasen's second novel exhibits some of the same elements found in his 2003 Newbery Honor Book: Florida local color, oddball adults (buxom and brawny), and a delightful quirkiness.But the sparkle that catapulted Hootinto the limelight isn't quite as brilliant here. Even so, there's plenty to like in this yarn, which, once again, drops an environmental issue into the lap of a kid. Righteous indignation, usually resulting from some sabotage of Florida's natural resources, has gotten Noah Underwood's dad in trouble before. This time, however, Dad's gone too far: he sunk a floating casino. Why? Its owner is dumping human waste in the water. Unfortunately, Dad can't prove it, and that's where Noah and his younger sister, Abbey, come in. The amateur sleuthing puts the sibs into some mildly suspenseful, occasionally amusing, situations, which, as in the previous book, share space with run-ins with a local bully (Noah takes some lumps but gets sweet revenge). An old-fashioned deus ex machina interrupts an otherwise believable setup, but Hiaasen still succeeds at relating an entertaining story while getting across a serious message about conservation and the results of just plain greed. Stephanie Zvirin
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Age Range: 10 and up
  
• Paperback: 272 pages
• Publisher: Knopf Books for Young Readers; Reprint edition (August 14, 2007)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0375841857
• ISBN-13: 978-0375841859
• Product Dimensions: 5.1 x 0.6 x 7.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 9.6 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (225 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #572,783 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Carl Hiaasen was born and raised in Florida, where he still lives with his incredibly tolerant family and numerous personal demons.

A graduate of the University of Florida, at age 23 he joined The Miami Herald as a general assignment reporter and went on to work for the paper's weekly magazine and later its prize-winning investigations team. Since 1985 Hiaasen has been writing a regular column, which at one time or another has pissed off just about everybody in South Florida, including his own bosses. He has outlasted almost all of them, and his column still appears on most Sundays in The Herald's opinion-and-editorial section. It may be viewed online at www.miamiherald.com or in the actual printed edition of the newspaper, which, miraculously, is still being published.

For his journalism and commentary, Hiaasen has received numerous state and national honors, including the Damon Runyon Award from the Denver Press Club. His work has also appeared in many well-known magazines, including Sports Illustrated, Playboy, Time, Life, Esquire and, most improbably, Gourmet.

In the early 1980s, Hiaasen began writing novels with his good friend and distinguished journalist, the late William D. Montalbano. Together they produced three mystery thrillers -- Powder Burn, Trap Line and Double Whammy -- which borrowed heavily from their own reporting experiences.

Tourist Season, published in 1986, was Hiaasen's first solo novel. GQ magazine called it "one of the 10 best destination reads of all time," although it failed to frighten a single tourist away from Florida, as Hiaasen had hoped it might. His next effort, Double Whammy, was the first (and possibly the only) novel about sex, murder and corruption on the professional bass-fishing circuit.

Since then, Hiaasen has published nine others -- Skin Tight, Native Tongue, Strip Tease, Stormy Weather, Lucky You, Sick Puppy, Basket Case, Skinny Dip, The Downhill Lie and Nature Girl. Hiaasen made his children's book debut with Hoot (2002), which was awarded a Newbery Honor and spent more than two years on the New York Times bestseller lists. For young readers he went on to write the bestselling Flush (2005) and, most recently Scat (January 2009). The film version of Hoot was released in 2006, directed by Wil Shriner and produced by Jimmy Buffett and Frank Marshall. ("Hoot" is now available on DVD).

Hiaasen is also responsible for Team Rodent (1998), a wry but unsparing rant against the Disney empire and its creeping grip on the American entertainment culture. In 2008, Hiaasen came back to nonfiction with The Downhill Lie: A Hacker's Return to a Ruinous Sport. The book chronicles his harrowing and ill-advised reacquaintance with golf after a peaceful, 32-year absence.

Together, Hiaasen's novels have been published in 34 languages, which is 33 more than he is able to read or write. Still, he has reason to believe that all the foreign translations are brilliantly faithful to the original work. The London Observer has called him "America's finest satirical novelist," while Janet Maslin of the New York Times has compared him to Preston Sturges, Woody Allen and S.J. Perelman. Hiaasen re-reads those particular reviews no more than eight or nine times a day.

To prove that he doesn't just make up all the sick stuff in his fiction, Hiaasen has also published two collections of his newspaper columns, Kick A** and Paradise Screwed, both courageously edited by Diane Stevenson and faithfully kept in print by the University Press of Florida.

One of Hiaasen's previous novels, Strip Tease, became a major motion-picture in 1996 starring Demi Moore, and directed by Andrew Bergman. Despite what some critics said, Hiaasen continues to insist that the scene featuring Burt Reynolds slathered from his neck to his toes with Vaseline is one of the high points in modern American cinema.

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

80 of 92 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Richie's Picks: FLUSH October 1, 2005

By Richie Partington VINE™ VOICE

Format:Hardcover|Amazon Verified Purchase

IN the spring of 2002 I wrote about Carl Hiaasen's first children's book, HOOT:

"Carl Hiaasen does an incredible job of showing the different styles of activism that different people resort to. He presents the reader with the contemporary clash of free enterprise versus global ecological issues. He has a lot to say between the lines about parenting, and he has some great insights into the methods of dealing with bullies.

"I've never read his adult books, but I sure hope Hiaasen writes more books for kids. HOOT is one heck of a first step into the world of children's literature."

So I was, of course, ecstatic that both the 2003 Newbery committee and 2003 Best Books for Young Adults committee recognized HOOT.

I was somewhat less thrilled about having to wait three long years for the pleasure of reading a second children's book by Hiaasen. And while FLUSH is a completely different story, everything that delighted me three years ago about reading HOOT is equally applicable to FLUSH.

"The deputy told me to empty my pockets: two quarters, a penny, a stick of bubble gum, and a roll of grip tape for my skateboard. It was pitiful.

" 'Go on inside. He's waiting for you,' the deputy said.

"My dad was sitting alone at a bare metal table. He looked pretty good, all things considered. He wasn't even handcuffed.

" 'Happy Father's Day,' I said.

"He stood up and gave me a hug. 'Thanks, Noah,' he said."

So begins FLUSH, the story of what happens after Paine Underwood pulls the plug on the Coral Queen and willingly gets arrested for doing so.

The Coral Queen is a three-tiered casino boat owned by Dusty Muleman. Dusty has been making a killing off of the boat's operations because he worked a deal with the local Native Americans to park the boat in a marina on their lands, give them a cut of the take and, thus, avoid having to take the customers a few miles offshore to gamble like all the other casino boat operators are required to do. What Noah's dad is so hot about is that he is sure that the raw sewage periodically washing up on Thunder Beach is the result of the Coral Queen's holding tanks being emptied illegally into the water.

A 60 Minutes piece about the author that was broadcast last month, "Florida: 'A Paradise of Scandals' "http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2005/04/15/60minutes/main688458.shtml, introduces Hiaasen:

"In a little less than a century, the state of Florida has been transformed from a largely uninhabited swamp to the fourth-largest state in the union. And no one has written about that transformation more successfully than Carl Hiaasen.

"Part humorist, part muckraker, his satirical novels about greed, crime and corruption in the Sunshine State have become fixtures on the best-seller list and embraced by influential literary critics who compare him to Mark Twain and H.L. Mencken.

"He is also an award-winning children?s author and a former investigative reporter-turned-columnist for the Miami Herald.

"And he has made a career of documenting, analyzing and interpreting what may be the most bizarre state in the union -- and one, Hiaasen says, is 'a victim of its own geography.' "

In the 60 Minutes interview Hiaasen talked about how being out on the water in his skiff is like church for him. In that regard, reading FLUSH feels like you are peering in even closer at the heart of Carl Hiaasen.

When I discussed HOOT three years ago, I mentioned that it contained humor, a bit of sadness, and a touch of suspense. All three qualities are once again present in FLUSH. So are the wildly quirky characters, from the bully (Jasper Muleman Jr.), to the brute (Luno), to the buxom blonde (Shelly), the bum (Lice Peeking), the bumbling attorney (Mr. Shine), and the mysterious pirate.

Carl Hiaasen is a master at storytelling. That he has utilized his superb talents to once again write a satirical novel about greed, crime and corruption in the Sunshine State for children (and me) is cause for celebration.

Thanks, Carl!

17 of 17 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Grandpa and Granddaughter Recommended! May 30, 2007

By Michael Meredith VINE™ VOICE

Format:Hardcover

There aren't many books that can appeal to both a grandfather and granddaughter, without leaving one or both of them feeling just a little shortchanged. Flush is that very, very rare exception!

Carl Hiassen has mixed in his usual elements into a froth that's appropriate for youths, but remains equally appealing to adults. There's a comic bad guy who values profit over quality of life (in this case the owner of a floating casino); a few witless thugs (both adult and kid-sized) and a man with anger management issues (a little reminiscent of the guy in Sick Puppy). But the heart of the story rests with the narrator, Noah and his little sister Abbey, two kids that share their dad's love for the Florida Keys.

Noah's dad has already tried to stop the Coral Queen casino boat from dumping raw sewage into water around the Keys, by sinking it. Unfortunately, the efforts of the local sheriff have restricted his ability to follow through once the boat is raised and reopened within a week. That leaves Noah and Abbey to find a way to shut down the boat, and clear their dad before their mom loses her patience and leaves him. But how do you prove that a specific boat is the source of foul bacteria and worse, especially when there's rat in the Coast Guard office that tips off the boat's operator whenever they are about to pop a surprise inspection?

It helps if you're resourceful and don't mind riding your bike everywhere. It also helps if you befriend a semi-rough blonde with a barb wire tattoo, and can stay clear of the boat owner's bully of a son.

I bought this book for my 10 year old granddaughter and she loved it! Then I read it and loved it. Within a month or so I suspect that everyone in the family will have finished it, with similar results.

9 of 9 people found the following review helpful

4.0 out of 5 stars Great Read December 7, 2005

By Kara J. Jorges VINE™ VOICE

Format:Hardcover

As a big Hiaasen fan, I had to check out his second juvenile effort, and was well rewarded for it. While seriously toned down in comparison to his books for adults, "Flush" maintained the off-beat flavor of his other works, as if one of them was written from a kid's perspective.

Noah Underwood is seriously worried his parents will get divorced when his father's latest stunt has him behind bars. Paine Underwood, an environmentalist, just can't sit back and do nothing while Dusty Muleman pollutes the waters with sewage from his casino boat, so he sinks the boat. Unfortunately, it was only in twelve feet of water, so it's only a matter of days before the "Coral Queen" is back in business.

Noah wants to help his father nail Dusty Muleman, but it seems hopeless, since witnesses won't cooperate and the casino owner seems to have the coast guard in his pocket. Then, Noah and his sister Abbey concoct a great scheme to stop the polluter once and for all.

Hiaasen does a great job with the characters in this story, from the bullies bedeviling Noah to the mysterious old pirate who keeps coming to his aid (alas, not Skink). He gets his environmental message across, as well, in a non-preachy way that both kids and adults can relate to. I highly recommend this book for readers of all ages.