Razor girl A novel

Review by New York Times Review

BLACK HOLE BLUES: And Other Songs From Outer Space, byJanna Levin. (Anchor, $16.) Levin tells the story of gravitational waves - "ripples" in the fabric of space-time first theorized by Einstein - and the scientists who built a machine to detect them nearly 100 years later. The collision of two black holes in 2015 allowed researchers to record the first sounds from space, concluding a 50-year experiment. MY STRUGGLE, BOOK 5: Some Rain Must Fall, by Karl Ove Knausgaard. Translated by Don Bartlett. (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, $18.) In my struggle 14 years that this volume karl ove spans, the one constant is Knausgaard's drive for literary success; the book, the penultimate installment of his autobiographical work, follows him from age 19 through the end of his first marriage, and sees him enter a prestigious writing program and secure a book deal. IN PRAISE OF FORGETTING: Historical Memory and Its Ironies, by David Rieff. (Yale University, $16.) Rieff, who as a journalist witnessed firsthand the atrocities of the Bosnian war, outlines a humane case against memorializing tragedies. Rather than helping people to heal, he argues, collective memories can often stoke generational hatred; common defenses of public memorials, such as the hope of preventing future atrocities, are naive. RAZOR GIRL, by Carl Hiaasen. (Vintage Crime/ Black Lizard, $15.95.) A cast of comic, only-in-Florida characters carry out this novel's elaborate farce: Lane, a Hollywood agent kidnapped in error after a fender-bender; his client, the star of a lowbrow reality show; and the woman of the title, who takes Lane hostage. Hiaasen's prose helps to keep "everything at the right temperature," our reviewer, Terrence Rafferty, wrote. "In Florida, you have to know how to stay cool." DIMESTORE: A Writer's Life, by Lee Smith. (Algonquin, $15.95.) This collection of autobiographical essays sketches out the Appalachian coal-mining town in Virginia where Smith grew up - before Walmart arrived, her father's store was demolished or country became cool. One thing about the South that will never change? "We Southerners love a story," Smith writes, "and we will tell you anything." HOMEGOING, by Yaa Gyasi. (Vintage, $16.) Starting in 18th-century Ghana, the lineages of two half sisters - one married to a white man and living in comfort, the other sold into slavery - unfold in Africa and the United States. Our reviewer, Isabel Wilkerson, said the novel offers what "enslavement denied its descendants: the possibility of imagining the connection between the broken threads of their origins."

Copyright (c) The New York Times Company [May 5, 2017]

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Review by Booklist Review

*Starred Review* Andrew Yancy (Bad Monkey, 2013) returns in this immensely entertaining wild ride through the Florida Keys. He is still doing penance as a health inspector on roach patrol for an earlier assault with a car vacuum. But when the star of a redneck reality show called Bayou Brethren goes missing, Yancy sees a chance to win back his real cop job at the sheriff's office. Merry Mansfield, the Razor Girl, is sharp, that's for sure, and one of the coolest characters Hiaasen has ever brought to the page. She runs car-crash scams but has the proverbial heart of gold, which lands her bejeweled flip-flops in a diabolically complicated story that includes (and often skewers) phony reality shows and the fine folks who bring them to us: goofball goodfellas; sand-restoration, reef-raiding scammers; an ill-fated, mongoose-owning stinky copycat psycho; a high-profile product-liability lawyer who's dangerously addicted to the very male-enhancement potion for which he recruits litigants in his TV commercials. And, oh yes, let's not forget an environmentally invasive infestation of Gambian pouched rats, electric cars, and cruise lines, along with Sharpie pens that create a male enhancement that perhaps only this author could dream up. Or maybe it is one of the true lurid Florida tales he claims to have incorporated into the story? This is the ultimate beach read for anyone with a taste for Hiaasen's skewed view of a Florida slouching toward Armageddon.--Murphy, Jane Copyright 2016 Booklist

From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.

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Review by Publisher's Weekly Review

Hiaasen's woozily funny mix of Florida mayhem, murder, and mirth brings back Andrew Yancy, goofball hero of 2013's Bad Monkey, who's still trying to solve a crime high profile enough to catapult him from inspecting restaurants in Key West to his old job as detective with the Monroe County sheriff's department. The characters he meets are as wacky and wildly hilarious as on his last escapade, but this time Hiaasen's sharply satiric arrows are aimed not only at environment-destroying greed-heads but grotesques from the world of show biz. And actor Rubinstein has a grand old time providing voices for all. There are the two kidnap victims: Hollywood talent agent Lane Coolman-when he speaks, you can almost see the perspiration on his upper lip-and his gruff, mainly inebriated, loose cannon client, Buck Nance, the star of the top-rated Bayou Brethren TV show. The kidnapper, Benny the Blister, is a growling, snarling genuine redneck of the homicidal variety, who's angling for a featured role on the series. They are accompanied by an assortment of Key West denizens, Buck's fellow thespians, Lane Coolman's sleazy associates, assorted lawyers, also sleazy, and a few banana-loving giant Gambian rats. Except for the rats, who have no dialogue, Rubinstein manages to find the perfect interpretation for each. A Knopf hardcover. (Sept.) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.

(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved

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Review by Library Journal Review

Ex-cop-turned-restaurant inspector Andrew Yancy is back in Hiaasen's (Bad Monkey) latest "only in Southern Florida" adventure. This time Yancy unofficially investigates the disappearance of the patriarch of a Duck Dynasty-type reality show after a booking at a Key West sports bar goes terribly wrong. Hiaasen does not deviate from the style that has made him famous, and fans can enjoy the usual vivid phrasing and humorous set pieces that characterize his works (Yancy's food inspection visits and a running gag about service comfort dogs both work particularly well). If there is any complaint to be made, it is that the main female character, the titular "Razor Girl," is not particularly well developed despite appearing throughout most of the novel, but the other criminals, cops, Mafia enforcers, Hollywood agents, and Key West citizens are memorable in Hiaasen's usual quirky way. While the ethical dilemmas of reality television have been more seriously explored elsewhere, it is doubtful they've been examined in such an amusing fashion. Verdict Hiaasen and Dave Barry fans will not be disappointed. [See Prepub Alert, 3/26/16.]-Julie Elliott, Indiana Univ. Lib., South Bend © Copyright 2016. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

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CHAPTER ONE On the first day of February, sunny but cold as a frog's balls, a man named Lane Coolman stepped off a flight at Miami International, rented a mainstream Buick and headed south to meet a man in Key West. He nearly made it. Twenty-seven miles from Coolman's destination, an old green Firebird bashed his car from behind. The impact failed to trigger the Buick's airbags, but Coolman heard the rear bumper dragging. He steered off the highway and dialed 911. In the mirror he saw the Firebird, its grille crimped and steaming, pull onto the shoulder. Ahead stood a sign that read: "Ramrod Key." Coolman went to check on the other driver, a woman in her mid-thirties with red hair. "Super-duper sorry," she said. "What the hell happened?" "Just a nick. Barely bleeding." She held her phone in one hand and a disposable razor in the other. "Are you out of your mind?" said Coolman. The driver's jeans and panties were bunched around her knees. She'd been shaving herself when she smashed Coolman's rental car. "I got a date," she explained. "You couldn't take care of that at home?" "No way! My husband would get so pissed." "Unreal," said Coolman. The woman was wearing a maroon fleece jacket and rhinestone flip-flops. On her pale thigh was the razor mark. "How about a little privacy?" she said. "I'm not quite done here." Coolman walked back to the Buick and called the man he was supposed to meet in Key West. "I'll be a few minutes late. You're not gonna believe what just happened," he said on the man's voicemail, leaving it at that. The cops arrived and wrote up the red-haired pube shaver for careless driving. Naturally, she had no collision insurance; that would be Avis's problem, not Lane Coolman's. A tow truck hauled away the Firebird, which needed a new front end including a radiator. The woman approached Coolman and asked for a ride. "Tell your 'date' to come get you," he said. One of the police officers had pried the damaged bumper from the Buick, and Coolman was trying to fit it into the backseat. "He doesn't have a car," said the woman, who'd buttoned her jeans. She was attractive in a loose and scattered way. Coolman had a weakness for redheads. "See, I work for an escort service. We go to where the client's at," she said. "Yes, I understand the concept." The woman's fleece was unzipped and beneath it she wore a black sequined top. Her toes must be freezing in those flip-flops, Coolman thought; the temperature was 55 degrees with a biting north wind, arctic conditions for the Florida Keys. "My name's Merry," she said, "spelled like Merry Christmas." "My name's Bob," said Coolman, "spelled like Bob." "Does that mean you'll give me a lift?" "Why not," Coolman said, the worst mistake he would ever make. At Mile Marker 22, Merry told him her last name was Mansfield, like the bombshell actress of the Fifties. Coolman stopped at a Circle K where he got a cup of coffee and Merry bought three eight-hour energy drinks, chugging the little purple bottles one after the other. "You running a marathon?" Coolman asked. "I'm all about performance." At Mile Marker 17, she told him she didn't really work for an escort service. "Wild guess--you're a dancer," he said. "On my own time," she replied. "Not one of those." "I didn't mean it in a bad way." "Why didn't you just say stripper? The games you guys play, I swear." Her eyelashes were a paler shade of red than her hair. Coolman said, "Why would you make up a lie about being an escort?" " 'Cause I needed a ride, Bob. If I said I was an artifacts appraiser you would've left me standing in the road." "What is it you appraise?" "Sunken treasure. Doubloons and cannonballs and so forth. Business is slow right now. I'm an expert on eighteenth-century Spanish maritime." "Do you have a real date, or did you make up that part, too?" Merry laughed. "He's an Air Force pilot based at Boca Chica. Why else would I be doin' my trim at sixty-five miles per hour?" At Mile Marker 8, she blurted, "Did I say Air Force? I meant Navy." She was buzzing like a flagpole in a lightning storm. "His name's Rocky." "What about your husband?" "He's a Rocky, too." "Stop," said Coolman. "Don't be judging me. I go for men with strong names." The closer they got to Key West, the more Southern her accent became. Coolman was foolishly intrigued. "What about you?" she said. "What's your field, Bob? Your expertise." "I'm in the entertainment business. I manage talent." "Your own, or somebody else's?" "Ever seen the show Bayou Brethren?" Coolman asked. "Little Rocky watches it all the time." "That's your son? Little Rocky?" "No, it's what I call my husband. Don't make me spell out why." "Anyway, I manage Buck. You know--the family patriarch? Buck Nance." "No shit?" "Leader of the clan," said Coolman. "Yeah, Bob, I know what a fucking patriarch is." The show was taped in the Florida Panhandle at a swampy location that somewhat resembled a Louisiana bayou. Buck Nance and his brothers were actually from Wisconsin, but the network paid for a Cajun dialogue coach. Merry said, "So what brings you all the way down here?" "Buck has a personal appearance." "Where?" "Parched Pirate." "Doing what?" "Just being Buck." Coolman hoped the guitar player had found the bar. Buck Nance had trouble speaking in public unless he was accompanied by a live musician. For his road gigs the writers at the network had come up with eight or nine amusing redneck stories, what you might call a monologue, and afterward Buck would take questions for ten minutes or so. The questions were printed on index cards distributed in advance to random fuckwits in the crowd. Coolman offered to take Merry to the show. "We'll hang backstage," he added. Like there was a backstage. "What about my date?" she asked. "Bail," Coolman said. "Tell him the truth--you had car trouble." "But then I shaved down there for no reason." "Not necessarily." The redhead smiled and shook her head. "For the Zac Brown Band I'd ditch my Navy boy in a heartbeat, but not for some yahoo from the bayou." "It's only the top-rated cable program in the whole country." "I prefer the nature channels. You know--penguins and cheetahs. Shit like that." "Buck converted his Bentley to an ATV with rifle racks." "Why would a grown man do something so ridiculous?" "America worships the guy. You should come hear him tonight." "Another time," said Merry. At Mile Marker 5, she made a call on her cell phone. All she said was, "Don't wet yourself, sugar. I'm almost there." At Mile Marker 4, after they'd crossed the bridge into Key West, she flipped open the visor mirror and checked her makeup. Freshened her lipstick. Brushed her hair. "You look terrific," said Coolman. "Damn right, Bob." At Mile Marker 3, she exclaimed, "Okay, pull in here!" It was a small shopping center with a Sears as the high point. Merry directed Coolman where to park. He was surprised when a white Tesla rolled up beside them. "That's your boyfriend?" Coolman knew a couple of CAA agents back in L.A. who drove jet-black Teslas. The white model looked pretty sweet. Coolman himself leased a corpuscle-red Mercedes SLK 350 that required no electric outlet. "I thought you said he didn't have wheels." Merry shrugged. "Must be a loaner." The young man who got out of the Tesla was wearing a leather bomber jacket. If not for the gold earring and oily long hair he could have been a Navy pilot. "It was nice meeting you," Coolman said to the redhead. "Oh, you're coming with." "Me? What for?" The man in the bomber jacket yanked open Coolman's door and put a pistol to his neck. "Let's go, dipshit." "Just take my wallet," Coolman said, breathless. "The Rolex, too, whatever you want." "You're adorable, Bob," the woman whispered. "Now get out of the fucking car." Excerpted from Razor Girl by Carl Hiaasen All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.

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