Carl Hiaasen has spent the past two months in the eye of the storm, the stance for which he is best known. As the unofficial voice of Florida, Hiaasen, renowned for his satirical novels and newspaper columns, has written frequently about the hurricanes that regularly batter his beloved home state. In particular, he focuses his angry gaze on local government "shoddiness", and corrupt building inspectors and developers. In his 1993 novel Stormy Weather, the inspectors sacrifice animals in the hope of escaping prison, while tourists get out their video cameras when they see hurricane victims dying in the street. 

In 1994, he devoted one of his columns in the Miami Herald to criticising the paper for accepting advertising from a construction company responsible for homes that he alleged "splintered like popsicle sticks" in a storm. The Herald lost a major advertiser, but supported their hugely popular columnist. Hiaasen's own home and family were unharmed by the most recent hurricanes. 

Meanwhile another storm is blowing up - the US presidential election. Florida looks set to prove as crucial to this election as it was to the last one. In 2000, the combination of "hanging chads" and the controversial tactics of Katherine Harris, Florida's then secretary of state, who managed to wipe hundreds of Democrat voters off Florida's electoral roll, became national scandals and, many believe, altered the outcome of that election. This time, all eyes are on this politically divided and vital swing state. As a native Floridian well known for his liberal politics, Hiaasen's views are canvassed keenly and read widely. While he criticises what he sees as the Democrats' insufficiently aggressive campaigning, he reserves much of his ire for Ralph Nader, whom he calls a "petulant spoiler", and a "hypocrite" for letting the well-monied Republican machine, which he professes to deplore, support his "sham campaign" (Florida's Republican party administration, headed by Governor Jeb Bush, ensured that Nader appeared on the ballot for next month's election, against the protests of the Democrats). Nader won 97,000 votes in Florida four years ago as the Green party candidate, when Bush clinched the election by a margin of only 537, but Hiaasen says he has nothing against the Green party. "The re-election of Bush would be a disaster only for those Americans who want clean air, clean water, a balanced budget, a sane energy policy and an end to the bloody mess in Iraq," he adds with deadpan irony.
 
Despite the fact that he is an outspoken Democrat, Hiaasen's fans span the political spectrum. Bill Clinton regularly requests early copies of his novels and George Bush Sr recently wrote asking for some signed bookplates for his wife. Bush Jr has yet to ask for an autograph but "I'd be thrilled if he did because it would suggest he has a sense of humour - which would suggest that he has intelligence... But I'd bet the only fiction that boy reads is memos from Cheney." 

PJ O'Rourke, the conservative commentator, puts Hiaasen's cross-party appeal down to his "eye for what is obviously wrong without getting carried away on the argument, whether he's writing about national politics or local ecology. Anyone who goes to south Florida can see there is clearly a problem, so it's not too hard to listen to this Jeremiah hollering in the wilderness." 

"He's just really, really funny," adds Dave Barry, a Pulitzer prize-winning columnist who works with Hiaasen at the Miami Herald. "Even when I don't agree with his point, I love the way he writes it. He presents his rage in an entertaining way. Carl is a literary Eeyore with his air of gloom. Which is funny because he's this extremely good-looking guy with a beautiful wife, a house on the Key, he's extremely successful." The Wall Street Journal described Hiaasen's style as a combination of the "scrutiny of Tom Wolfe and the twisted imagination of Hunter S Thompson".
 
But rage can be monotonous and some critics have complained that Hiaasen's novels harp on a predictable string, a complaint unwittingly underlined by his former UK publisher, Pan Macmillan, with the repetitive design of his book jackets (he has recently transferred to Transworld), as well as the insistence of his American publishers on the thumping two-word titles ( Tourist Season, Lucky You, Basket Case), "for the sake of branding", Hiaasen explains with a touch of wryness.
 
Carl Hiaasen was born in 1953 in Plantation, Florida, a small suburb of Fort Lauderdale, the eldest of four children. His grandfather and namesake, "a big stubborn Norwegian farmboy", had moved to Florida from North Dakota in 1922. He started up a law firm, later joined by Hiaasen's father Odel, which earned much of its business from property development, exactly the form of business against which Hiaasen rails in his books. Despite the recurrence in his novels of sons who are disappointed with their fathers' careers, Hiaasen insists he never resented his father for doing this work. His mother, Patricia, who still lives in the house where Hiaasen grew up, was a teacher. His sister Barbara works in conservation, "but she has the more scientific approach whereas I'm just the pissed-off guy boxing in the shadows." 
When Hiaasen was growing up, Plantation was fringed with swamps and scrubs, and his voice rises as he recounts his childhood adventures. Much of this area was later obliterated. The dirt road on which he and his two best friends, Bob Branham and Clyde Ingalls, would ride their bikes, is now an eight-lane motorway dotted with nine shopping malls: "It is a very difficult thing for a kid to watch that unfettered part of your childhood being paved before your eyes," he says. Branham, still Hiaasen's close friend, adds: "Carl always felt strongly about the destruction of the wildlife around him, and now he's got a pulpit." 

Hiaasen's outlook was also shaped by the wider political crises of the 1960s. "I was tremendously affected by the assassinations of the 60s, especially John F Kennedy, then Bobby [Kennedy] and Martin [Luther King]," he remembers. "It just seemed like all the stitching of the country was coming undone in such a violent way." 

In high school, he started a satirical newspaper, More Trash, that he wrote himself, and discovered that humour was a more effective method for making people listen to an opposing voice than "proselytising and ranting": "The cool kids who never spoke to me would stop me in the halls and tell me how much they liked More Trash so I realised then that people really like to laugh," he remembers. 

A few months shy of their high-school graduation, Hiaasen's friend Clyde Ingalls committed suicide. "Clyde was this gangly, curly-haired guy, not very smooth with the ladies, very troubled," says Branham. Hiaasen immortalised his friend in his books in the character of Skink, a wild-eyed woodsman who lives to protect the Everglades from developers. "People like to put some political spin on poor Skink, but he has always just been my idea of what would have happened to Clyde if he had grown up," says Hiaasen. 
Soon after Clyde's death, Hiaasen, then 17, married his high-school girlfriend, Connie Lyford, and went to Emroy College. Their son Scott, who now works as a journalist, was born the following year. "I never resented the responsibility, but then I wasn't exactly a party guy. I certainly can't remember going home in the evening and thinking, 'man, I wish I was a surfer'," Hiaasen laughs. Two years later, he transferred to the University of Florida to study journalism and after graduation worked as a reporter and then feature writer for a local paper based in the rural town of Cocoa. Two years after that, Hiaasen's father died, aged 49. When Hiaasen was offered a job by the Miami Herald he accepted in order to be closer to his mother, and reluctantly moved back to Plantation, commuting to Miami.
 
Hiaasen says he learned to read, aged four, by poring over the Miami Herald sports pages. But his decision to work in journalism was a mixture of pragmatism and idealism. "I knew I'd become a writer eventually, but my focus then had to be the newsroom and bringing home a pay cheque for the family," he says. "It was a hell of a time to go into journalism because you felt so inspired by what the New York Times and Washington Post were doing [about Watergate]," he remembers. "There was this feeling that there was a great wrong, and the wrongdoers were running the country." 

Hiaasen's vivid sense of right and wrong still informs his journalism today, particularly with regard to the war in Iraq ("Vietnam without the mosquitoes"), of which he has been a vociferous critic in the Miami Herald. "People say sometimes, gosh, that was brave of you to write such-and-such last week. 'Brave?' What do they mean 'brave?' It's right! How could you not write it? Sure, it would be easier to write a funny story about something the dog dug up in the garden, and there are those columnists who do that. But I told my editor, the day I do that, put a bullet in my brain because it's over." 

Hiaasen arrived at the Miami Herald in 1976 and within three years had worked his way up to the investigations team. "It was clear from the start that Carl had a very fine sense in finding a story," says his former editor James Savage. "He can build a story, like a craftsman builds a house. He could see from the start what one quote, what illustrative anecdote the story would need, whereas the rest of us would be gassing about for weeks." 

Hiaasen's work on the investigations team was exactly what he had dreamed of doing as a child, and he makes references to those days fondly and frequently in conversation and his books. His narrators wax sentimental about the grubby old days of journalism, when newspaper offices reeked of coffee and cigarettes and stale pizza. "You'd hear the wire machines chittering and the police scanners gabbling and the paste-up guys snorting at dirty jokes... These days we buy the loyalty of our readers with giveaways and grocery coupons, not content," he writes in Basket Case (2002). "Not to make a dinosaur out of myself, they really are very different from when I was young. Newspapers have dramatically slimmed down and are just not as fun, which is why I don't regret not doing the investigation stuff anymore. Those days are gone," he says. 

It was at the Herald that he met Bill Montalbano, who suggested the two of them write a thriller based on a news story Hiaasen had recently covered about a Columbian assassin. ("There was a lot of violence in Miami then. It was before Don Johnson showed up in his Armanis.") They wrote three books together - Powder Burn, Trap Line and A Death in China - straight-up thrillers in which men use few words and women wait for them in bed with sassy rejoinders and seductive smiles. "Those books were much more in Bill's voice than Carl's," says Hiaasen's longtime agent Esther Newberg. "Carl was then just in his 20s and Bill, being much older and experienced, was a real mentor to him." After the third book, Montalbano was transferred to China as a foreign correspondent and Hiaasen decided to write on his own.
 
In Tourist Season (1986), his first solo venture, Hiaasen found his own style - fast-paced, tongue-in-cheek - and his subject matter. The novel tells the story of an egomaniacal newspaper columnist, Skip Wiley, who becomes so enraged by the overdevelopment of Florida that he resorts to terrorism. Hiaasen points out that he wasn't actually made a columnist until after he had written the book, but his readers are inevitably curious about the relationship between the author and his characters. Autobiographical details are scattered among his protagonists, including one who keeps pet snakes (Hiaasen recently released his because "the quantity of rats they consumed required many trips to the local pet store, and my wife wasn't keen on travelling with a carful of rodents"). 
"In each of the books I want there to be a character who gets away with stuff I wish I could," Hiaasen says, with a grin. There is, he adds, quoting Skink in Sick Puppy (2000), "a fine line between good crazy and bad crazy". Although the names change, the main character in all his novels is a hard-living bachelor, a renegade outsider and often one who left journalism due to some kind of scandal. "That protagonist, that louche outsider, is Carl's self-idealisation. It's like his alter-ego," says Branham. "But I see it as him exaggerating himself."
 
He is not quite the outsider, however. On the rare occasions that Hiaasen visits the Miami Herald's office these days, "there is a receiving line of people waiting to greet him like a long lost son", says his editor Bob Radziewicz. In the columns he has written for the Herald since 1985, Hiaasen is known for being fearlessly direct. In one, he described as "boneheaded" the decision of a city commission to withhold funding for a convention out of fear that communists might attend. When the commission demanded a clarification to this "false and misleading statement", Hiaasen replied that because the column was neither false nor misleading he couldn't so much as add "a cheerfully instructive footnote".
 
Double Whammy (1987) and Skin Tight (1989) soon followed Tourist Season, coinciding with his gradual move away from the newspaper office to writing from home. Yet the influence of his journalism is always apparent in his novels. Contemporary news stories, or ones he worked on as an investigative reporter, often find their way into the books. He was inspired to write Lucky You (1997) by the case of Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh. He held up to ridicule the growing white supremacy movement and simultaneously showed how it was a product of America's blinkered refusal to look at problems within: "There's so much hate that we direct externally that we forget we have our own psychos. But that's the role of the satirist - you have to examine your own country and say, look!" He is a vocal supporter of the death penalty for those, such as McVeigh, who "richly deserve it": "Bye bye, Tim! That's what I say and I'm a liberal." 

He researches his novels just as he did his investigations. Strip Tease (1993), set in an erotic dancing club, is full of journalistic observational detail, such as the "studious and impassive expressions [of the clients], like judges at a cattle auction". "When Carl was doing Strip Tease , he wanted to go to strip joints, which is the last place you'd usually find him," James Savage recalls. "So he called up my wife and asked her if she'd mind if I accompanied him, and off we went. Of course, Carl being Carl, he spent most of the time talking to the girls about problems they had with child care."
 
But it is his wildly comic plotting that has secured Hiaasen his popularity with readers. "You can see elements in the books that he can't use in his journalism: his descriptions, dialogue, characters -they are all so wonderful and funny as hell," says Barry. "And there's always this weird twist, like that guy with a WeedWhacker [a kind of trimmer] for an arm in Skin Tight. It makes you wonder what's going on in his brain. I'm glad he writes because if he didn't he'd probably be out there killing people." 

In Hiaasen's fiction, almost all actions are revealed to be self-serving. Seemingly altruistic gestures by a politician turn out to have mercenary motives; any declaration of intent will prove to be pretence. But he writes from the villain's point of view with obvious glee, and Barry says that while he is cynical, "he's not bitter, and I think that's because he uses his writing as a vent - Carl doesn't keep his feelings in, that's for sure".
 
Despite the cynicism, Hiaasen the novelist tends towards happy endings. In Hoot (2002), in order to stop the construction company, the three children play around with the surveyors' stakes, just as Hiaasen, Branham and Ingalls used to do. But unlike them, the fictional children are successful. "That," he says, "is wishful thinking overcoming my Norwegian pessimism." 

As he has increasingly spent more time on his books and less on his journalism (since he began as a columnist for the Miami Herald he has cut down from three columns a week to one), the former have become more subtle and confident. Starting with Strip Tease, which was unsuccessfully adapted into a film starring Demi Moore, and continuing with his latest book, Skinny Dip, he has increasingly written from women's points of view and his first foray into children's literature, Hoot, won the prestigious Newbery Award two years ago.
 
Although he still uses his books to do what he originally loved about journalism - "righting wrongs and pointing out the crap" - he has given increasing attention to the demands of fiction. Andrew Billen in the Evening Standard wrote in 2002: "When it comes to women, his novels remain hormonally challenged." But in Skinny Dip , he has created a female character who is neither idealised nor demonised, but believably fallible, albeit a persona who, like all of Hiaasen's female characters, provides salvation to the hapless male character.
 
In the early 90s, Hiaasen and Connie separated and he moved down to the Keys on his own. In the evenings, he would go to a local restaurant for a bite and a leisurely read. The manager of the restaurant, Fenia Clizer, noticed him and "thought this was peculiar behaviour, seeing as drinking and partying are the main recreations around here", says Hiaasen. They recently celebrated their fifth wedding anniversary. Anecdotes about their four-year-old son, Quinn ("That was the one name I could think of that didn't remind me of someone who I didn't like, and, of course, he is The Mighty Quinn"), and 13-year-old stepson Ryan are related with the pride of the second-time-around father. Both boys, he adds, are big classic rock fans; Quinn knows all the lyrics to "Stairway to Heaven".
 
As well as journalism, 60s and 70s rock music looms large in Hiaasen's novels. Good characters like it and bad or dumb ones get the lyrics wrong. In his study, an old poster of the Rolling Stones is lovingly framed; a shiny acoustic guitar rests on the floor. "Playing guitar is the one thing Carl can't do well," says Barry with a laugh. "I'm in a band with Amy Tan and Stephen King [The Rock Bottom Remainders] and Carl plays with us occasionally. I remember one time we were playing and Carl brought his guitar teacher along and the two of them were at the back and you could hear in every song the teacher yelling, 'C, Carl! Now A!'"
 
Whenever he feels blocked, he "bangs the hell out of the guitar" until he feels right again. The musician Warren Zevon, who died last year of lung cancer, was a particularly close friend, and the two bonded over a shared "dark, visceral kind of humour". Zevon was one of the few people who was allowed to read Hiaasen's novels in progress. Hiaasen sent him the manuscript of Skinny Dip chapter by chapter, and it was Zevon who suggested the title. The last conversation Hiaasen had with him was on a Friday when Zevon requested the final chapters. But Hiaasen wanted still to tweak them so he hesitated before posting them. Zevon died on the Sunday. The chapters arrived on Monday. "As a fellow perfectionist," Hiaasen says, "Warren would have understood."
 
Some have suggested that, after a lifetime of being angry, maturity and a second marriage have mellowed him. He is, he says, "probably more of a novelist than a journalist these days", if only because he spends much more time on the former. 

"I think he's less interested in shocking people," says Barry. "I don't want to say his humour has softened but he's become more patient in his novels about letting you find the characters and the humour." This has given his novels a warmer glow than the tangy sharpness of his earlier work. Skinny Dip has been greeted in the US with adulatory reviews. Writing in the New York Times, critic Janet Maslin described it as "a screwball delight so full of bright, deft, beautifully honed humour that it places Mr Hiaasen in the company of Preston Sturges, Woody Allen and SJ Perelman".
 
He rarely leaves the island these days - the thought of traffic is a sufficient deterrent - making only the rare exception for his sons and the occasional rock concert. Instead, he spends his days in his white house with his young family, taking the boat out on the Bay. From his doorstep he can see more and more housing developments approaching. When the children are at school, he holes up in his office, which faces, not the ocean, but the main road with the passing traffic that gets louder every day: if it looked out on the water, he explains, he'd never do any work, he'd spend all day staring at the herons and the seacows. 

But Hiaasen insists he is as angry as he ever was. He is angry about the war, angry about political failures, angry about the upcoming election and, most of all, as ever, angry about the destruction of Florida. He still sees it as his "responsibility" to tell people about this stuff. "I do believe the system will out the bastards." But, he adds, in a stern voice that comes wrapped inside a calm smile, "you gotta stay mad. As frightening as this may sound, what you see in the books is the way I see the world. And so far I haven't seen anything, either in Florida or elsewhere, to dissuade me from it." 

Carl Andrew Hiaasen
Born: March 12 1953, Florida. 
Education: 1970-72 Emory University; '72-74 University of Florida. 
Married: 1970 Connie Lyford, '96 divorced (one son); '99 Fenia Clizer, (one son, one stepson). 
Career: 1974-76 Reporter for Cocoa Today, Florida; '76-79 reporter, Miami Herald; '79-85 investigative reporter, Miami Herald; '85- weekly columnist, Miami Herald.
 
Some books: 1986 Tourist Season; '87 Double Whammy; '89 Skin Tight; '91 Native Tongue; '93 Strip Tease, Stormy Weather; '97 Lucky You; '98 Team Rodent: How Disney Devours the World; 2000 Sick Puppy; '02 Basket Case, Hoot; '04 Skinny Dip.
 
With William Montalbano: 1981 Trap Line, Powder Burn; '86 A Death in China. 

Some awards: 2003 Newbery Award; '03 Damon Runyon Award for services to journalism.