Scat, by Carl Hiassen
Things are not going well for Nick Waters. He hasn’t heard from his father, who is part of a National Guard unit in Iraq, for days. His biology teacher, Mrs. Starch, who has always been a tyrant, has been particularly nasty of late. Yesterday she made the mistake of trying to intimidate Duane “Smoke” Scrods, a boy who is also quite capable of striking fear into the hearts of his classmates. As she wagged a pencil in his face, Smoke bit it off – then calmly chewed and swallowed it. The next day Mrs. Starch mysteriously disappears during a class field trip to Black Vine Swamp? What is going on?
With Scat, Hiassen continues the tradition begun in Hoot and Flush of developing complex, interesting and off-beat characters, combined with mystery and a timely ecological message. It is my favorite of the three books
