Mr. Hiaasen's latest hero protagonist is Andrew Yancy, a former Key West detective who has been demoted to health food inspector, (Roach Patrol) after committing a somewhat lewd act with a dust buster on someone important. At least that's the back story if I remember correctly. No matter, all you need to know is that Mr. Yancy is very territorial about who might build a house next to his lovely Key West location and block Yancy's gorgeous sunset views. In real estate, location is everything, and views are to be protected with firearms, if necessary.
I can only recall one person in my life who might inhabit a Carl Hiaasen novel. We'll call him Lance, who was my co-worker for many years, and eventually my boss for a short time. Lance was a tall, ruggedly handsome guy who was actually at Woodstock. He still has the $5 ticket that they never collected.
Lance's libido, if measured, was off whatever chart you might devise to measure it. Think Warren Beatty, but not famous. Lance moonlighted in live porno acts and movies, along with his wives. There were several, and still are.
I no longer have the 1971 edition of 'Playboy' that included some photos of his first wife, named Jayme Collins for the story, that featured a narrative about the girls who were into having their naked bodies painted. There was cute Jayme, showing off her naked tush and some sideline views of her breasts, sporting the latest artwork on her body. It was the 'Laugh-In' era, if you're old enough to remember a former Secaucus truck-stop go-go dancer named Goldie Hawn who gyrated on the show as the camera zoomed in on the painted graffiti on her body. We've always lived in interesting times.
At one point when Times Square was a place where you could come away with a sexually transmitted disease rather than photos of you and Disney characters, there were actual live sex shows, copulating couples on a stage, performing in some play that quickly required clothes to be shed. There certainly wasn't much dialogue at all. If anyone forgot their lines, no one noticed. There were no 'Playbills' distributed.
One lunch hour a few of us from the office took in Lance and Jayme's performance. They were still married at time, no children. Lance took a week's vacation so he could perform with his wife in the show. Lance come toward the stage from the furthest aisle in the theater and popped up on stage and pleasured his wife.
Live sex shows were not deemed to be legal and after a few performances the place was eventually raided, with the cast arrested and taken downtown. I believe the 'producer' got everyone out and charges were dropped. But performances ended. We were lucky enough to have seen the show before it closed down. No many people alive right now can claim that. There is no poster of the cancelled show gracing a wall in Joe Allen's.
Lance's second wife was a stripper and a co-star with Lance in a movie called 'Appetites.' There is no Leonard Maltin review of this celluloid epic, but Lance played someone called Jeffrey, who after tiring of watering the window boxes filled with geraniums at the East Hampton location, took to 'Cynthia' as she walked along the beach as the fog was lifting. I think the director was heavily influenced by a scene in 'From Here to Eternity.'
Lance, in a post-production interview with us, told us the camera guys were very excited by the naturalistic scene being presented by nature as the fog lifted and the waves rolled in. There's nothing like making a classic porn film.
Cynthia also performed at a Queens Boulevard strip joint called 'Lucky's. I don't know how many shows she did a night, but we did catch her act once. After all, we knew the husband and got great seats. No backstage passes however.
Lance's third wife kept her clothes on, and actually held jobs outside the sex industry. With her, Lance settled down a bit and had two children, who now are quite grown and making him a grandfather.
Restlessness set in and he became married for the fourth time, but to a woman who reminded him greatly of his second wife. So much so in fact, it was the second wife, long past her days of taking her clothes off for a living. So, four marriages with three woman. Not an entirely unheard of ratio.
If you've been a reader of Mr. Hiaasen novels as I have, you have a nice collection of covers that line the bookshelf, because aside from having great stuff inside the book, the covers are great as well, as colorful as the pastel homes in Bermuda.
Action in these books takes place principally in the Key West area of Florida. Until reading these books I never knew there were really as many "Keys" in this tip of Florida as Mr. Hiaasen takes us through drives on the highway. Key West of course is most famous for being the haunt of Ernest Hemingway. There's Key Largo, but Google Earth reveals so many other "Keys that you are astounded.
Key West is the nucleus of the action but instead of protons, neutrons and electrons circling it we have a Hiaasen collection of dimwits, nitwits and fuckwits, depending on their IQ, who come and go. Some stay.
Aside from Andrew Yancy the other most central character is Merry (as in Christmas) Mansfield, the cute young thing who stages auto accidents on dead beats who owe other people money.
Merry's way of creating a distraction after expertly rear-ending the subject's car is to appear behind the wheel with her skirt hiked up and her hand holding a razor, feigning distracted driving because she was concentrating on grooming her labia majora and labia minora while steering and operating a gas pedal.
This appearance greatly disarms the victims (always a male), and helps set other things in motion. In a YouTube interview Mr. Hiaasen explains the Merry character was created after his reading of someone who was doing something very similar whose accident got some press coverage, principally due to her lack of coverage.
As far-fetched as all this sounds I just heard on a news show last week of the Texas A&M girl who was taking a topless selfie of her breasts while driving that she was going to share with her boyfriend. Unfortunately for this young lady she really did become distracted by trying to do all this while steering and she rammed the back of a police car. To add further charges to the write-up she had an open bottle of wine next to her on the seat. No word was released about how her photographic efforts might have turned out, but her photo (with top down) was taken as she was booked. She wasn't smiling.
There is some violence in 'Razor Girl,' but it is almost cartoonish in quality, and when it happens to the bad guys it is swift and you grieve not at all.
Mr. Hiaasen is always up-to-date. In addition to this South Florida locales he has now added Cuba, since we now once again recognize that land mass that lies 90 miles south of Miami.
Because of Andrew Yancy's findings in the restaurants he inspects, you have to wonder how well Mr. Hiaasen is received by proprietors who might be familiar with his books. I mean, we've all heard of rats, but Gambian rats? They sound like something that mauled Leonardo DiCaprio in 'The Revenant.'
Will Merry and Andrew find each other romantically? Will sand get exported from Cuba by an outfit named Sedimental Journeys? Will the reality show Bayou Brethern survive a missing star? Will Andrew Yancy get his detective shield back?
Follow the action through Florida's southern causeway. You'll come away knowing more about the place than when you started.
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