As soon as you open Carl Hiaasen's Lucky You, you know this book is going to be different. You know how usually a book begins with that lame paragraph full of legalese about how everything in the work is fiction? His paragraph ends with this: "although the indiscriminate dining habits of the blue crab and the commom black vulture are accurately portrayed ... there is no approved dental use for WD-40, a trademarked product."
Then the novel itself starts. JoLayne Lucks has purchased a Florida state Lotto ticket at the Grab N Go. Her number each week for five years has been 17-19-22-24-27-30, each number representing the age at which "she had jettisoned a burdensome man," Hiaasen writes. But now she has finally won — $28 million! — and thus "in spite of themselves, (the men) had finally amounted to something."
But not so fast. Things are never so easy in novels written by Hiaasen. Two dim-wits who have started their own militia also had the winning Lotto ticket number. But they had little interest in splitting the money with anyone.
Besides, it's all just another government conspiracy to keep white men like them from getting their fair share of dough, right? So they start plotting how to get their money and it involves breaking more than a few laws. Meanwhile, a newsaper feature reporter is sent by his scared, feeble editor to check out whether there is a story in Lucks winning the ticket.
And this is all just in the first 15 pages. Later the reporter joins with Lucks to retrieve her ticket from the militiamen. These are men who become way too fascinated by a Hooters waitress and might be scary if they weren't so darn dumb.
As with most of his books, Hiaasen takes some well-deserved pot shots at developers. This time he also mocks people making money off bizarre religious aparitions, such as "the road stain Jesus," where the holy figure can be seen in an oil stain.
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