In a 2010 interview with Bloomberg News about his later novel Star Island, Hiaasen said of Sick Puppy, "I thought I'd invented the most despicable lobbyist ever, and then Jack Abramoff comes along and makes my guy look like the Dalai Lama." Literary significance and criticism Sick Puppy has been reviewed well and one example describes Hiaasen's skills thus. Other reviews praised the novel's harder edges. In his review of Hiaasen's later novel Skinny Dip, Michael Grunwald made several references to the characters of Sick Puppy: Cultural influence The title of the book inspired the name of Australian rock band Sick Puppies. See also T. Coraghessan Boyle's novel A Friend of the Earth is a slightly more serious treatment of ecoterrorism and ecotage. Henry Adams's novel Democracy discusses similar politics during the late 19th century. Lobbying in the United States Continuity This book is the fourth appearance of Hiaasen's recurring character Clinton Tyree, aka Skink, who was first introduced in Double Whammy. Twilly Spree reappears in Hiaasen's books Skinny Dip and Scat. One of Palmer's lobbying clients, mentioned in passing, is a United States Congresswoman wishing to reward sugar company executives who have "persuaded their Jamaican and Haitian cane pickers to donate generously - well beyond their means, in fact - to [her] reelection account." This scam - using the names of migrant workers to cover illegal hard money donations - was also used by the sugar cane industry to support the corrupt Congressman Dilbeck in Hiaasen's novel Strip Tease. Palmer Stoat, in one of his many malapropisms, mis-quotes the Jethro Tull song "Thick as a Brick" by using the word "stick" instead. Hiaasen used the same malapropism in the title of a January 5, 2018, column for the Miami Herald, written as a mock apology letter from Steve Bannon to then-President Donald Trump, attempting to explain away some of the statements attributed to Bannon in Michael Wolff's book Fire and Fury, including his description of Trump's daughter Ivanka, appointed her father's Advisor, as "dumb as a brick." Footnotes References External links Author's own site entry on the novel 2000 American novels Novels by Carl Hiaasen Eco-terrorism in fiction Environmental fiction books Novels set in Florida Alfred A. Knopf books