Highfire, son, he thought to himself, you don’t wanna stop being mythical and start being real. This was surely true, as being real was only one step away from being extinct. [p. 337]
Vern is probably the last of his kind. He lives in a shack deep in the bayou, watching cable TV and drinking Absolut, and reminiscing with his old friend Waxman. Then Squib, a teenaged boy fleeing a corrupt police officer with a crush on Squib's mother Elodie, stumbles upon Vern's home, and finds himself employed to run Vern's errands while Waxman is unavailable. Which is not as simple as it sounds, because Vern (formerly Wyvern, Lord Highfire) is a dragon, and Waxman (who's going to bury himself in the ground to regenerate for a few months) is a mogwai, which here is a dragon half-breed.
Constable Hooke, who's thoroughly crooked and generally nasty ('Every time he met someone, Hooke was figuring how to murder them and get away with it, in case the need arose') encounters Vern, too. He's on the outs with a mafia gang in New Orleans, and is quick to concoct a cunning scheme in which both Vern and Squib will have starring roles, whether they like it or not. Vern's grudging friendship with Squib -- they hang out, talk about movies and TV, and Squib talks Vern up from a bad fit of the blues -- might yet come back to bite him.
This was great fun, sometimes reminiscent of Carl Hiaasen with its humour, bent cops, noirish ambience, and people choosing life off the grid. It's very definitely not for children, though Colfer's other work (Artemis Fowl et cetera) is aimed at younger readers. The plot wraps up satisfyingly despite some setbacks, and Squib, Vern and Elodie all get happy endings and new beginnings.
I started reading this because the first line ('Vern did not trust humans was the long and short of it. Not a single one. He had known many in his life, even liked a few, but in the end they all sold him out to the angry mob.') was mentioned in a Guardian article on 'Top 10 first lines in fiction'. Hmm, I thought, that sounds interesting... then discovered I'd owned it for three years. It's possible that my Kindle TBR pile is becoming unwieldy.
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