Honey Santana - self-proclaimed queen of lost causes - has a Plan. She may be a single mother living in a trailer-park with her teenage son; she may have just been sacked from her day job for whacking an over-friendly co-worker in the balls with a crab mallet; she may be an obsessive compulsive with an anger management problem. But, she's determined to set up her own eco-tour business, paddling tourists around the Florida Everglades in ocean kayaks. She's also working on a scheme to help rid the world of irresponsibility, indifference and dinner-time telemarketers. The result is a kayaking trip from hell involving an unplanned overnight stay on Dismal Key - one of the Everglades' Ten Thousand Islands - for Honey, her kayaks, and her two 'guests': a part-time telephonist who's recently foul-mouthed her, and his less than enthusiastic mistress. What Honey doesn't know is that, lurking in the island's undergrowth, are two men with death on their minds: Sammy Tigertail, a half-blood Seminole Indian and failed alligator wrestler; and Honey's deranged co-worker, Louis Piejack, now with most of his fingers surgically mis-attached to the wrong knuckles, and intent on revenge. A holiday to die for? In Hiaasen's chaotic universe, anything can happen ...