Razor Girl

Digital audio performed by John Rubenstein

I love reading Hiaasen’s ridiculously crazy plots, featuring the NOT-tourist-friendly Florida. In this romp, former cop Andy Yancy (now demoted to inspecting restaurants for health violations) is joined by a cast of eccentrics including: Merry Mansfield (a delicious redhead who specializes in staged fender-benders done while she is shaving her nether regions); Buck Nancy (star of a reality TV series); Martin Trebeaux (owner of a company that steals sand from one beach to replace erosion on another); Brock Richardson (Miami lawyer hooked on a product he is litigating against); and a possibly psychotic street person known as Blister.

The action is fast, furious, and totally insane. The bad guys show more are frequently three cards short of a full deck. The women almost always get the best of the men. Hiaasen has a gift for drawing this reader into his wildly improbable plots. And I enjoy the ride every time!

John Rubenstein does a great job of performing the audiobook. He has a lot of characters to deal with and really shines when voicing the bad guys. show less

Razor Girl is written by Carl Hiaasen.
The book is a sequel of sorts; a continuation of Bad Monkey and the saga of Andrew Yancy.

It is exhausting reading books written by Carl Hiaasen. The pace is like a Formula One race
with plot points veering and skidding at 100 miles per hour.
The characters are hilarious and raunchy and their escapades are off the charts.
I am addicted to his writing - so funny, so ridiculous and so much fun to read. And I love it that
the books make so much fun of Florida. Love it!

Merry Mansfield, aka Razor Girl, specializes in kidnapping for the Mob. Her preferred method is rear-ending targets and asking them for a ride.
Auto accidents, kidnapping, beach ‘renourishment’, reality TV shows, Hollywood agents, rooster show more farmers, restaurant health inspectors - just a few of the (often) bizarre topics in Razor Girl.
Warning: Once started, Carl Hiaasen’s books are hard to put down!
**** show less

Carl Hiaasen’s knowing, cynical humor slices through the veneer that supports some unscrupulous people. In Razor Girl do-nothing sheriffs, reality television frauds, their agents and class-action lawyers all get the treatment.

Andrew Yancy is a cop relegated to health inspector in Key West. When a reality TV star ends up lost and wandering town after a disastrous appearance Yancy attempts to find him in an ongoing quest to regain his badge. While Yancy’s girlfriend is finding herself in Scandinavia he hooks up with a stunning and intellectually sharp insurance-fraud specialist – among other things – named Merry Mansfield. Razor Girl. “In his love life Yancy specialized in devising scenarios that could lead only to unwise show more decisions.” In Razor Girl he has found “a person who took her last name from a dead movie star and crashed automobiles half-naked for a living.”

Hiaasen excels at taking real Florida events and twisting them into stories permeated with humor and human foolishness. This is one of those stories. show less

Soooo…..a reality TV star walks into a local pub & proceeds to crack jokes about the LGBTQ community & motorcycle clubs, unaware he’s in a gay biker bar. What could possibly go wrong?

If you’ve read Hiaasen before you know what will follow…..hilarity, utter mayhem & a cast of loons running amok somewhere in Florida. Oh, and Gambian pouch rats just slightly smaller than a volkswagon.

Let’s see. There’s the eponymous Merry, a young woman who earns her keep “accidentally” rear ending cars while attending to some…uh…personal grooming. Andrew Yancy is a disgraced former cop currently living the dream on roach patrol as a restaurant inspector. And “Big Noogie” Calzone, a NYC mobster, is in town to buy sand for the show more disappearing beach in front of his luxury hotel.

It all begins when Merry (literally) runs into an ambitious Hollywood agent whose biggest client is Buck Nance. Buck started out life as Matthew Morgan Romberg (of the Wisconsin Rombergs) but is now the patriarch of a reality show set in the Keys. Think Duck Dynasty but with chickens.

Buck has a couple of problems. Before they were discovered, he & his brothers were members of a leading cover band. Think ZZTop but with accordions. Then Hollywood came knocking & before they knew it, they were all living on a set in Florida with their families. Buck’s biggest challenge used to be keeping his crazy mistress (she of “the Wet Wolverine” prowess) away from his wife. Now he’s on the run after barely surviving a bar brawl & somehow ticking off the Taliban. Meanwhile his brothers are plotting a coup….

Eventually all characters are involved in a search for the AWOL bearded wonder. Along the way more crazies join the parade in a story that could only come from the slightly disturbed mind of Carl Hiaasen. Nobody is safe as he skewers everyone from politicians & tourists to reality stars & their rabid fans.

The laughs just keep on coming as one OTT situation crashes into another in an impossibly convoluted plot. But Hiaasen also uses his stories to draw attention to Florida’s serious environmental issues & the lack of stewardship that results whenever they interfere with tourist dollars.

So if you’re looking for something to fill the void left by Dostoyevsky or Faulkner, walk away. But if you’re in need of a laugh at the end of a long day pick this up. And just as an aside, if you happen to know what the Wet Wolverine is… show less

The genius of Hiaasen is that he writes fiction based 100% on non-fiction; real life human behaviors and events. Sure, some of it might be over the top, and those real life human behaviors and events may not have happened yet, but give it another day or week but at some point they most assuredly will. Guaranteed.

He couches it all as wacky South Florida, but the magnitude of the craziness and idiocy is American to the core, through-and-through good old USofA. And while the US doesn’t have a total lock on stupidity, much like military spending, by itself it must equal all the other countries put together; reveling in its No.1 spot with no one in the rearview. Where else on the planet can people with no redeeming qualities achieve show more unparalleled fame and fortune; Jackass and all the spin-offs, Trump and all his spawn, a woman whose only known for a sex tape and a 200 lb. ass. I could be wrong, but I'm pretty sure that only in America Reality TV "stars" practically overnight become bazillionaires.

Per usual Hiaasen captures that in all its greatness:

"Bayou Brethren was still doing spectacularly well without Buck Nance, the younger brothers having bloomed into fully realized redneck caricatures. Miracle's illicit affair with Junior had added a magic spark of toxicity. During the most recent taping, Buddy had thrown a Dewar’s bottle at Junior while Clee Roy had stolen Junior's iPhone to leer at a picture of Miracle's bare ass that Junior had snapped in the outdoor shower. Meanwhile the Nance wives were in a frothing riot of jealousy and spite. It was magnificent television."

I thought that it was too long at times with Andrew Yancy getting his ass handed to him time after time, I was getting to the point of... just end it already damn it! There was also a point where I realized that the timeline was goofy. But at no time did it get old, and Yancy was consistently cool under pressure so it was all good.

Overall: great characters, great story, and a really good ending. show less

I've enjoyed Carl Hiaasen's books so much over the years, it pains me to say that this was his worst. I love this genre, which I call "South Florida Absurdist," by Hiaasen, Dave Barry, and Tim Dorsey, and they never fail to entertain the hell out of me. This is the first one that didn't make me laugh out loud even once; and where the plot seemed forced and lazy instead of inspired and madcap.

My dislike started almost immediately, in how the book came to be titled Razor Girl. Merry Mansfield (not her real name, we never learn it) is a beautiful redhead who makes her living by purposely crashing into the cars of men who are in debt to her employer. When they pull over to inspect the damage, the men discover Merry behind the wheel, with show more her skirt pulled up around her waist, allegedly shaving her lady parts on the fly because she is "late for a date." This is supposed to be such a turn-on that the male victim loses his wits, allowing time for Merry's accomplice to drive up in another car, abduct the poor slob, take him to another location and "convince" him to pay up.

This gimmick was just so stupid and distasteful to me, and it turns Merry into a sleazy character. Then we're supposed to follow her through the book root for her as she hooks up with Andrew Yancy, the antihero of the novel. This is the second outing for Yancy, a former Key West cop who got into trouble and lost his badge in the far superior Bad Monkey. He is eager to prove his worth and get back on the force, but in the meantime he makes a living as a restaurant inspector, providing lots of opportunity for disgusting scenarios and descriptions that I could have lived without.

And that brings me to another thing that really bothered me about this one - the incongruous, moralizing tone that peaks out amongst all the filth. I didn't notice it so much in his other books that Hiaasen is just another self-righteous idiot incapable of recognizing his own bias and bigotry.

Aside from the plot being unfunny, unnecessarily gross, and all over the place; my other issue with the novel is the characters. In this type of caper, there will always be crazies, drunks, mobsters, and other assorted deviants, but there needs to be at least one or two characters that are likable. In this one, everyone is horrible, including Yancy. For one example, he pulls a stunt involving a cruise ship that to me was just abhorrent, and clearly speaks to the author's hatred of the cruise industry and its patrons. Yancy's girlfriend Rosa was key to the first novel, but in this one she barely appears and then moves to Norway; although she calls Yancy occasionally. WTF? That was ridiculous and added absolutely nothing to the story.

I could go on and on, but to sum up: I really didn't care for this one and if you are new to Carl Hiaasen I would advise not to choose this as your first. show less

Buck Nance, star of a redneck reality show named "Bayou Brethren," goes on a homophobic, racist rant during a standup routine in a Key West bar, then disappears. His manager, Lane Coolman, was supposed to meet him but he too disappears. Both, it turns out, are prisoner of a psycho who goes by the street name Blister, until later he changed it to Deerbone.

Meanwhile, Martin Trebeaux, a con artist who steals sand from beaches and sells it to the owners of other beaches to repair storm damage, and Big Noogie, a heavyweight in the east coast crime syndicate, are planning a scheme to import beach sand from Cuba. On the side Martin is stooping Juveline, Big Noogie's present girlfriend.

In the midst of all this chaotic activity are Merry show more Mansfield and Andrew Yancy. Merry makes a living by crashing into cars with a "Razor in her hand and her skirt up around her hips. When the driver comes to confront her she claims she was shaving her bikini parts. The routine is a set-up designed to facilitate the kidnapping of the driver.

Andrew is feebly trying to convince his girlfriend to return from Norway while valiantly attempting to resist the irresistible charms of Merry. A former detective, Yancy's primary focus is his desire to solve a "big crime" so he can be reinstated as a detective and leave his job on the roach patrol. Another subplot involves Miami attorney Brock Richardson's plan to build a gaudy house next door to Yancy's lot and spoil his view.

This tongue-in-cheek satire targets reality TV, Hollywood agents, small-time con artists, restaurant owners, and bumbling detectives. Mansfield and Big Noogie turn out to be the smartest, most competent member of this cast. The rest of the crew, acting as a team, probably couldn't figure out how to replace a burned out light bulb.

Yancy is the protagonist we are supposed to root for and in a sense we do. He does have his moments, but there is no avoiding the fact that he behaves rather stupidly on many occasions. For example, he walks in unarmed on Blister on at three occasions. The first time Blister stabs him in the abdomen. The second time he bursts into a room where Blister, now Deerbone, is holding a gun. Oops! Deerbone kidnaps Yancy, ties him up, and stashes him under a bed. Deerbone can't even manage that competently, however, so Yancy escapes and has dinner with a stunning model—he just happened to meet—in the same restaurant as Deerbone and his captives, Coolman and Nance. This convenient escape permits Yancy to subsequently barge in on Blister/Deerbone a third time. Guess what; Deerbone is holding a gun and Yancy is unarmed.

All of this is fun but the story moves at a slow pace due to repeated detours to incorporate yet another humorous scene. "Razor Girl' is only 333 pages and I like Hiaasen's irreverent silliness but the book goes on too long and I became impatient for Hiaasen to wrap everything up.

One personal note: I appreciated the note identifying Adobe Caslon as the typeface used in "Razor Girl." The front material in novels generally credits the cover design, cover photograph (if any) and other significant graphic features of the book but typically ignores the feature that most influences the readability of the book. I am much more interested in knowing the typeface used in the book than the other information routinely provided. show less