Razor Girl

by Carl Hiaasen

Merry completes her latest abduction on the Overseas Highway, only to find that she and her accomplice "Zeto" have snatched the wrong person: Lane Coolman, a talent manager from Los Angeles on his way to supervise a live appearance at a Key West bar by his firm's most important client, reality television star Buck Nance. Without Coolman present, Buck, who is badly unprepared to give an improvised performance, resorts to telling a few jokes overheard from his brothers, which are quickly decried by the crowd as racist and homophobic slurs. In fear for his safety, Buck flees into the night and hacks off his trademark beard in the kitchen of a closed restaurant. The beard fragments are reported to health inspector Andrew Yancy, a former police detective.

While waiting for their real target, Merry and Zeto let Coolman call his boss, who is indifferent to Coolman's safety but discreetly asks Monroe County Sheriff Summers to start a search for Buck. Because of the urgent need to find him quickly, the Sheriff's only detective, Burton, reluctantly asks Yancy to assist with the search.

After Zeto announces his intention to kill Coolman and dispose of his body, Merry takes pity on him and allows Coolman to escape while they abduct their real target, Martin Trebeaux, a beach nourishment hustler who delivered faulty sand to the beach behind a Mafia-controlled Boynton Beach hotel. After completing the job, Merry spends the evening in Key West, where she sees Coolman and whimsically decides to spend the evening with him. She meets Yancy when Coolman is called to the site of an accidental death outside their hotel: a Muslim tourist from Brooklyn who was accosted by a raving street person and fell off the city trolley, fatally stabbing himself in the heart with a souvenir being clutched to his chest. Coolman is horrified to be told that the assailant loosely fits Buck's description, and infuriated when Merry leaves him to have dinner with Yancy.

Only a few days later, Merry invites herself to stay in Yancy's home on Big Pine Key, saying she enjoyed his company and ignoring his feeble protests that he's in a relationship, even though his girlfriend, Dr. Rosa Campesino, is traveling in Europe, and may be planning to stay permanently.

It turns out that Buck has been kidnapped by his "biggest fan," an unemployed burglar named Benny "Blister" Krill. Blister was in the audience at the bar when Buck fled, and ran after him to show his devotion. Obsessed with Buck's TV show, Bayou Brethren, Blister refuses to believe Buck's pleas that the show is an act, and decides to keep Buck hostage until the latter acknowledges their commonality. Blister's impromptu "tributes" to impress Buck include getting garish tattoos, accosting the Muslim tourist on the tram, and re-kidnapping Coolman. In a burst of inspiration, Blister demands that he be written into Bayou Brethren as Buck's long-lost twin brother. Buck and Coolman try to humor him until they can escape, but start to seriously consider the ploy after seeing the next episode on Blister's television, which has been filmed without Buck. They present their demands to Coolman's boss, Jon "Amp" Ampergrodt, who cannot afford to ignore Coolman's threat to make Buck and his "brother" the stars of a rival spin-off that will eclipse Bayou Brethren in popularity.

A tattoo artist leads Yancy and Merry to Blister's apartment, but Blister impulsively stabs Yancy in the abdomen with a knife, forcing Merry to rush him to the hospital. Over the next several days, Yancy tries doggedly to apprehend Blister, a job made more difficult by the fact that Buck and Coolman are shielding him, using him as a decoy to gain a more lucrative contract for Buck. After Blister refuses to accept a "deal" from anyone other than Amp in person, the agency head reluctantly flies to Florida.

Rosa's continued absence eventually makes Yancy give in to Merry's attempts to seduce him, after which she disappears, leaving a note at his house encouraging him to go after Rosa in Oslo. Yancy begins a trip to Oslo, but returns to Florida after he realizes during a layover that he has not resolved his own feelings about the case. Merry goes back to Miami and continues her work for the mob, but realizes that Yancy is likely to continue pursuing Blister and may need her help.

After tracking Buck, Coolman, and Blister to their hideout, being captured, and escaping, Yancy works out a deal with Coolman to take custody of Blister as soon as Amp signs a new contract doubling Buck's salary. When things go awry during the meeting with Amp, Blister abducts Yancy at gunpoint and forces him to drive the group to the airport. They are intercepted by Merry, who disables their car and distracts Blister with her signature move. Blister realizes the danger and recovers his stolen gun, but Buck, who has had enough of Blister's violent behavior, sneaks up behind him and breaks his neck.

The novel incorporates at least three interconnected subplots: *Martin Trebeaux, the beach nourishment scammer, talks his way out of death by offering to replace the faulty beach, and promising huge profits from a new scheme to use sand from Cuba's pristine northern beaches in all future enterprises. His scheme and his life come to an abrupt end when he foolishly allows his Mafia contact's girlfriend to seduce him.

*Brock Richardson and his fiancée Deb, an obnoxious couple from Miami, plan to build a mansion-sized house on the empty lot next to Yancy's, blocking his prized sunset views; Yancy tries various ploys to delay the construction, but a chance meeting in Key West leads to him doing a small favor for Trebeaux's Mafia capo, who is grateful enough to "persuade" Richardson to not only abandon the project, but to sell the lot to Yancy for a pittance.

*The most serious emergency of Yancy's restaurant inspector career occurs when two Gambian pouched rats are discovered in the kitchen of a Key West eatery, whose co-owner happens to be the city mayor; the rats evade capture for most of the novel, but are finally cornered by the owners and turned over to Yancy for euthanasia; Yancy cannot bring himself to do it, and instead slips them into the luggage of a distracted cruise ship passenger departing Key West for [[Galveston, Texas]], a humane act that Merry finds irresistible.

Buck becomes a national hero for his actions in Florida, but he has had enough of celebrity - estranged from his family, harried by his captivity, and badly shaken by the realization that his TV persona has become a role model for violent racists like Blister. He quits Bayou Brethren and moves back to Milwaukee to open a music store.

Yancy is saddened, though not surprised, when Rosa breaks up with him, admitting that she prefers Norway's tranquility to Florida's turbulence. Yancy's emotional blow is greatly softened when he returns home and finds Merry waiting for him, having decided that Yancy is too much fun for her to give up (at least for the immediate future).