Razor Girl

June 13, 2016
At the start of Hiaasen’s breezy, enjoyable sequel to 2013’s Bad Monkey, Lane Coolman, a Hollywood talent agent, is driving from Miami to Key West to keep an eye on Buck Nance, star of Bayou Brethen, a reality TV show, when his rental car is rear-ended by an attractive crash-scam artist, Merry Mansfield. Coolman ends up kidnapped, while Buck incites a riot at a Key West bar. Meanwhile, a Bayou Brethren fan, desperate to impress his TV hero, goes too far when he attacks a tourist. Aided by Merry, Andrew Yancy, a lowly health inspector looking for a way to get his job back with the sheriff’s department, seizes the chance to solve a murder case in which Buck, who goes AWOL from his show, is a suspect. Add a few Gambian pouched rats, a New Jersey mobster, a businessman selling stolen sand, and reprehensible neighbors to the fast-paced plot, and readers will be hoping that Yancy and the other quirky denizens of Hiassen’s Florida will soon be back for another screwball adventure. Author tour. 300,000 first printing. Agent: Esther Newberg, ICM.

October 31, 2016
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.

Narrator John Rubinstein provides balance to the edgy humor in Carl Hiaasen's latest book, an offering designed to provoke simultaneous gasps and giggles. The audiobook features Hiaasen's usual cast of despoilers, crooks, and misfits. Rubinstein is the adult in the room who prevents the entire enterprise from crashing. Had he followed Hiaasen into the land of over-the-top, which includes male-member-shaped skin growths, Gambian pouched rats, reality TV, kidnapping, and a woman whose con includes eye-catching performances of shaving her privates, it would have been just too much. Fortunately, Rubinstein plays it straight, delivering the craziest lines with a cool aplomb that smooths some edges without reducing the comedy. G.S.D. � AudioFile 2016, Portland, Maine