Flush is a young adult novel by Carl Hiaasen first published in 2005 and set in Hiaasen's native Florida. It is his second young adult novel, after Hoot and has a similar plot to Hoot but a different cast and is not a continuation or sequel. The plot centers around Noah Underwood, a boy whose father enlists his help to catch a repeat environmental offender in the act. Summary The narrator of the story is a teenaged boy name Noah Underwood. Noah's father, Paine, a passionate environmentalist, has been arrested for sinking the Coral Queen, a casino boat operated by "Dusty" Muleman, whom Paine believes has been illegally dumping sewage from the boat's holding tank into the ocean at night. However, Noah and his younger sister Abbey see that the Coral Queen will be repaired and back in business by the end of the week. While Paine is publicizing his actions to the media, Noah and liay are worried when Abbey hears their mother, Donna, talking about filing for divorce and tells Noah. Paine asks for Noah's help in getting a witness statement from Charles "Lice" Peeking, a former mate on the Coral Queen. Lice is noncommittal, but he later disappears, and his girlfriend Shelly (Dusty's ex-fiancée) offers to help, believing that Dusty may have had Lice killed. Abbey tries to take matters into her own hands and sneaks out of the house at night with the family's video camera to try to record Dusty Muleman dumping the boat's sewage into the marina. However, the footage is too dark and blurry to prove anything. Realizing the problem is that no one has ever been able to trace the sewage spills directly to the Coral Queen, Noah, Abbey, and Shelly come up with a plan, code-named "Operation Royal Flush": Shelly, who works on the Coral Queen as a bartender, will flush food coloring down the Coral Queen's toilets, dyeing the sewage and marking a trail in the water when it gets dumped. When Shelly points out that there is too much dye for one person to squeeze out, Noah decides to sneak on board with half the dye and flush it from a different toilet. The plan goes off nearly perfectly, with Abbey manning a getaway boat. But just as they are escaping the marina, their engine stalls, and they are found by Dusty's security guards. One of them points a