"Are there two sides to 'Sparky'?" I ask, referring to Florida's woefully inept electric chair.

He smiles. "Finally Jeb [the governor] decided Sparky wasn't good policy. All it takes is a couple guys' heads to explode and those Republicans go running for cover. We're like one of the last states in the union to have an electric chair and we don't have one that works. After the last guy got juiced, Jeb Bush's cavalier comment was, 'It's just a nosebleed.' He wants to look tough on crime, but lethal injection isn't tough enough. Lethal injection is too nice a way to kill someone."

I laugh. I move my fork toward my fish. Then I just set it back down. Do I really want to eat this? Sure. I take another forkful. Then I ask, "'Sick Puppy's' trip is comic eco-noir. Are you an ecologist with a big E? Or do you just become one after living in Florida?"

"I just grew up feeling this way," Hiaasen answers. "It's not saving a tree for the sake of saving a tree. If you save enough trees, you stop a lot of the graft and criminal behavior going on between politicians. They're selling their vote for what everyone wants -- a piece of the land. For that waterfront or lake front or estuary. What 'Sick Puppy' is about is that they can get it as long as they have these lobbyists. It's perfectly legal." He takes a bite of his fish.

"The thing down in Florida is you can get in your car and drive by the carnage. See the bulldozers fill in the estuary. I just always wanted to put one of these bastards into a book and have terrible things happen to him." He shakes his head and smiles. "I'm still amazed that readers get so plugged in to my books even though they're set in Florida. All these folks have had the same experience. Maybe they had their kid in their car and wanted to show something from their own childhood, a pond or a lake, and it was gone. It was a Wal-Mart. There is a unique and unforgettable feeling you get in the pit of your stomach when you turn a corner and that place is not there. And that's what they say when they write, 'We're trying to save Lake So-and-So. They're trying to put in a shopping mall ...'" He pauses. "I'm thinking there are just so many good people who are just human beings who have a wonderful memory of the way something was."

Let me jump outside the narration of this lunch for a moment. A week or so later after we eat fish, 'Sick Puppy' hits the New York Times bestseller list. My immediate thought is, Good for Hiaasen.

This is a novel reaction for me. In my career, I've interviewed probably 50 novelists, and two dozen of them wrote that curious animal known as the "bestseller." I won't mention their names, but Hiaasen is the first writer whose marketplace success makes me feel good. Then I wonder why. He was neither arrogant nor humble. Hiaasen just was. And what he wasn't was New York cynical. New York world-weary. Then I realize Hiaasen is probably one of those peculiar animals called "good people." Or maybe just a typical Floridian?

We end lunch with espresso and Hollywood. We talk of Tinsel Town and that god-awful movie Demi Moore made out of Hiaasen's "Strip Tease." But there is no "Day of the Locust" in Hiaasen's vision of Hollywood. He has nothing but thoughtful enthusiasm.

"I always tell people, 'What's the worst thing that can happen to a writer who has a not-so-perfect movie made out of one of their books?'" Hiaasen says. "If that's the worst thing that ever happened to you, you've had a pretty damn good career." He shakes his head. "Sometimes it works out and sometimes it doesn't. I had fun. The check cleared. The script wasn't what I would have written, but the book had problems too. My books are not plotted to warm the cockles of a screenwriter's heart. There are a lot of subplots. Jumping around. They're really not star vehicles. I spend a lot of time on characters that to Hollywood must seem like minor characters. But they interest me. And if they interest me, I want to know about them. It's my book. When it lands in front of a screenwriter, they have to turn it into three acts. Make sense out of it. At the same time keep the humor, which is not slapstick. They can put on the screen a line or moment that is funny, but unless you have a narrator on the screen it's hard to capture the tone."

He then says something I never thought I'd hear a bestselling novelist admit. "People always say, 'God, screenwriters make so much money.' My response is, 'They earn it.'" But Hiaasen is not some goody-goody sap: "Check your pride at the door, is what I always say. Hollywood will always tell you that what you wrote is the best thing they've ever read. And as soon as you're out the door, they're on the phone to the guy they're going to get to rewrite it."

We're both done eating. This has been the most subliminal meal I've eaten in a long time. I am no longer hungry. But I'm not really full. If Hiaasen weren't so interesting I'd be carping about Stanhope culinary ennui. As we leave, Hiaasen remarks that my town, New York, "is the greatest city in the world." Before he's chauffeured to a television studio for an interview he tells me, "I feel much more comfortable here than in some places in Florida."

Where in Florida would Hiaasen not feel comfortable, I wonder. The Everglades? Disneyland? Then I know. A Wal-Mart built on a dredged wetland. Hiaasen's limo disappears up Fifth Avenue. I bet the word "fellatrixes" really exists.

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