Carl Hiaasen has done it again. Razor Girl continues Hiaasen's streak of hilarious mystery? crime? suspense? romance? action? novels. OK, his books are not easily classified. They stand in a class by themselves, in spite of occasional attempts to emulate him.
His newest foray revisits the world of Andrew Yancy, the former Key West detective demoted to food inspector whom we met in Bad Monkey. Through a confusing and convoluted chain of events, he meets up with Marry, a.k.a. Razor Girl. Merry makes her living by purposely rear-ending other drivers. When her targets come to chew her out, they see that she apparently hit them because she was in the midst of shaving her, uh, "bikini area." When they see her exposed, shaving cream covered, uh, area, they inevitably fall into her trap, which involves kidnapping or extortion.
But she's not really a bad girl. She and Yancy team up to find Buck, a reality TV star who has disappeared, and Buck's manager, whom Merry had mistakenly targeted earlier. But it looks like Buck has been snatched, and the thugs who hired the man who hired Merry to snatch the other guy she meant to snatch when she snatched Buck's manager are tangled up with Yancy's next-door neighbor, the sleazy lawyer who is in the middle of a class action lawsuit while making himself a victim of the questionable product he's going after.
Confused yet? Hiaasen, as is his custom, turns the most convoluted, interconnected story line into the most reasonable, believable chain of events you have every laughed your way through. His world is full of bumbling criminals, dimwitted characters, Florida zaniness, random coincidences, greedy goofballs, and satisfying endings. I am pleased to report that after 20 (or so) novels published over the last 30 (or so) years, Hiaasen has not lost his touch.
2016 Reading Challenge: A humorous book
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Great review!
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