 
Lucky You
One afternoon in November, JoLayne Lucks drives to the Grab N'Go mini-mart to buy spearmint Certs, unwaxed dental floss and one ticket for the State Lotto.
Three hundred miles away, a red Dodge Ram pulls into the handicapped parking area outside the 7-11 convenience store in Florida City, dispensing would-be white supremacists Bode Gazzer and his sidekick Chub for their Saturday fix of three six-packs of beer and five Lotto tickets.
And, for once, both JoLayne's and the white boy's numbers come up.
Now, by rights, 28 million dollars is money enough to satisfy any American's wildest dreams. Even split three ways. But Bode and Chub have other ideas - the brightest of which is to form their own strong-arm militia to save America from certain doom. They need all the money they can get. They need JoLayne's ticket.
Ms Lucks, meanwhile, is not the sort of person to take a robbery lying down. She comes from the weirdest community in Florida, where religious relics turn more bucks than real estate. She's got a hotshot reporter in her bathtub, a lovelorn admirer from the Feds at the end of her finger - and a plan to rid the sunshine state of the Mafia, the developers and the freaks.
But first she's got to get her ticket back. Whatever it goddamn takes...
From Kirkus Reviews, 09/01/97:
As soon as an informative headnote warns that "there is no approved dental use for WD-40", you can relax, knowing that you're in for several blissful hours in the hands of a master farceur whose subject this time is what passes in South Florida for providence.
Even though she's confirmed the winning numbers on her Lotto ticket, placid veterinary assistant JoLayne Lucks refuses to give an interview to rolling-stone Register features writer Tom Krome. Hoping to rescue the turtles of Simmons Wood from mob-backed development by buying the parcel out of her half of the $28 million jackpot, she doesn't see any point in telling the world she's rich.
Then, suddenly, she isn't, because the holder of the other winning ticket, halfwit white supremacist Bodean Gazzer, decides to double his own payout by heisting her ticket. Bode and his sidekick Chub have their own public-spirited vision for the prize: arming the White Rebel Brotherhood (membership 2 and growing) in preparation for the UN-sponsored invasion of the US via all those unused handicapped-parking spaces.
Along with the obligatory romantic complications, Hiaasen provides an alarmingly comical parade of spiritual counterparts to the providential nostrum of the Florida lottery: the weeping fiberglass Madonna, the Road-Stain Jesus, the miraculous apostolic turtles who bring nirvana to the features editor sent to retrieve Krome after he takes off with JoLayne in pursuit of the Lotto thieves.
Not even Hiaasen (Stormy Weather, 1995, etc.) can sustain this balancing act forever, and eventually it collapses like a house of cards. But for an impossibly long time, the whole wild sideshow seethes and boils with all the grinning vitality of a "Have a Nice Day'' poster reimagined by Hieronymous Bosch. Just when you think Hiaasen can't outdo himself, he finds more lunatics who just happen to tap into your deepest fears about America. Makes you wonder.
Carl Hiaasen: Lucky You
ISBN 0-333-69070-2
Macmillan 1997
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