by Carl Hiaasen
Orion Books Hardback ?9.99
ISBN: 978 1-84255- 774- 7
Pub: Oct 1st 2009
• Sam Hawksmoor review
Following closely in the footsteps of his environmental kids' thriller Hoot, Carl Hiaasen plunges once again into the murky waters of the Everglades and a species under threat. This time in SCAT it’s an endangered panther and the only evidence it is exists is some panther poop in the glades.
Nick and Marta are school friends in small town Florida and are somewhat terrorised by the evil Mrs Starch of the biology class. She seems to pick on everyone and completely humiliates Smoke - aka Duane Scrod junior who eats her pencil and swallows it! All the kids are wary of Smoke because he’s a pyro freak and has the strangest father with talking birds who speak French!
Nick’s father is in Iraq serving with the National Guard, another classmate Libby’s father is with the Sherriff’s office. When there’s a field trip to the glades and Black Vine Swampand it's suddenly set on fire and Mrs Starch goes missing – suspicion naturally falls on Smoke. Has he done something terrible to Mrs Starch? The fire department certainly thinks so, and the fact that he’s missing that night only confirms it. Nick may even have him on video sulking around the swamp.
There’s a suspicious message from Mrs Starch to say she had family problems but the headmaster Mr Dressler knows that she has no family. He hires a completely mad teacher to cover her classes who will only read one page in the book and it's the wrong book. No one in Nick's class is happy.
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