Literature / Razor Girl

Razor Girl is a 2016 novel by Floridian humor novelist Carl Hiaasen.

Merry Mansfield, the titular "Razor Girl" is a loveable con artist who specializes in assisting Loan Sharks or The Mafia in kidnapping deadbeats trying to "skip", by rear-ending their cars on the highway and pretending to have been distracted by giving herself a bikini shave while driving. Unfortunately, her latest job goes awry when she mistakenly rear-ends talent agent Lane Coolman, on his way to manage his star client Buck Nance's live appearance at a bar in Key West. Without Lane present, Buck - the "patriarch" of a Reality Show family of rural Louisiana chicken farmers - badly misjudges his audience and tries to win over the crowd with racist, homophobic jokes, inciting a riot that sends him fleeing for his life.

Enter disgraced former detective Andrew Yancy, now working as a restaurant health inspector, who believes that finding the missing celebrity may be his ticket to reinstatement with the Monroe County Sheriff's Department. Inevitably his path crosses with Merry, with Coolman, and with Buck Nance's self-proclaimed "biggest fan", a dangerously unhinged house burglar named Benny "the Blister" Krill, "who's more Buck than Buck could ever be..."

N.B. Has nothing to do with "razorgirl" Molly Millions, a recurring character in William Gibson's science fiction novels.

Razor Girl contains examples of:

• Actor/Role Confusion: Crossed with Reality Show. After being kidnapped, the star of the Duck Dynasty ripoff Bayou Brethren is literally begging his Stalker with a Crush to believe him when he says the whole show is an act, that he's not a Deep Southern chicken farmer, he just plays one on TV - without success.
• Alcohol-Induced Idiocy: Buck Nance gulps two Jack & Cokes before going on stage, which makes him forget his lines and prompts his decision to try winning over the crowd with racist, homophobic jokes.
• Amusing Injuries: Benny Krill, a "hopelessly incompetent" burglar earns the nickname "Blister" after backing into a serving bowl of hot soup while trying to burglarize the kitchen of a homeless shelter, causing "parboiled, abscessed buttocks".
• As the Good Book Says...: Busboy Winchell, after finding about $1,200 in cash dropped on the street ($600 if you believe his word), lost it all in a poker game on the same night;
  Winchell: Man, you can't never win if you don't take a chance. Even the Good Book says so.
  Yancy: I'm pretty sure it doesn't.
• Beleaguered Assistant: Lane Coolman, Buck Nance's agent, who also plays the roles of "manager, confidante, pimp, shepherd..."
  Buck and his brothers were the agency's hottest clients, a galactic media phenomenon, but they required round-the-clock supervision. Buck in particular could be a runaway train.
• Believing Your Own Lies:
  • Buck Nance is incensed when his brothers continue to film the TV show without him, and use the opportunity to drop all sorts of embarrassing anecdotes about him on camera. Buck plans to deliver a fiery "sermon" about his brothers' betrayal on the next show - temporarily forgetting that the show's "church" and his title of "deacon" within said church are both completely fake.
  • Brock Richardson, a wealthy class-action attorney whose main activity is hustling potential clients through TV commercials and then referring their cases to practicing attorneys, honestly believes he has the "gift of instant empathy" and enough powers of persuasion to convince a Mafia capo to return the diamond engagement ring he had stolen from Richardson in the first place, free of charge. The outcome is predictably humiliating.
• Celebrity Is Overrated: What Buck Nance realizes by the end of the novel, when he opts to quit Bayou Brethren and open a music store in Milwaukee. Blister's Loony Fan stalking may have prompted this realization, but Buck was already heartily sick of the show:
  An unhurried, unexamined existence looked pretty sweet to Buck. A life free of soggy collard greens, rooster shit, and all those fucking TV cameras in his face.
• Celebrity Resemblance: While dazed by painkillers, Yancy remarks that Merry reminds him of Susan Sarandon, on whom he's had a crush ever since seeing Thelma & Louise.
• Chronic Hero Syndrome: Believing that the case has been solved and that the proper authorities will be responsible for capturing Benny Krill, Yancy books a flight to Oslo to reunite with Rosa. Then, during a layover in Atlanta, he sees a newspaper article about the Muslim tourist Krill (indirectly) killed, and a picture of the man's widow and children. He cancels his flight and returns to Florida.
• Deep South:
  • The Romburg brothers, born in Whitefish Bay, Wisconsin, reinvented themselves as "Buck Nance and the Brawlers", a redneck accordion band, "eager to gain a following in the South" after becoming "disenchanted with the so-called progressive elements on the rise in Wisconsin politics." When they are cast as rural chicken farmers in a Duck Dynasty imitation, they undergo a "makeover" to play up to redneck stereotypes: in addition to their long, flowing beards, they are taught to speak with Cajun accents, shoot guns and ride motorcycles, and have their normally shiny teeth darkened and chipped (their director also prohibits them from brushing while the show is being filmed).
  • During a break in filming, the show's producers note that South Florida, "due to its diversity" is one of the markets where the show is least popular, and sends the eldest brother, Buck Nance (f.k.a. Matthew Romburg) to make a public appearance in Key West. Not recognizing the demographic of his audience, he starts telling homophobic and racist jokes, starting a riot that sends him fleeing in terror for his life.
• Did Not Think This Through: Benny "Blister" Krill initially kidnaps his idol, Buck Nance, to get some enforced "one-on-one" time, but later has the idea of blackmailing the producers of Buck's show into adding him as a new character, Buck's long-lost twin brother. Buck and his agent string Blister along, and he remains blissfully unaware that they plan to call the cops on him as soon as the agency signs a new contract doubling Buck's salary.
  For all its daring, the plan was also laughably, fatally absurd. Later his mother would tell reporters that it proved she was right about living downwind from the paper mills. All those toxic vapors obviously stewed poor Benny's brain cells. A goddamn squirrel had more sense.
• Elites Are More Glamorous: In-Universe. Prawney, a hulking African-American bodyguard, is "introduced to clients as ex-NFL or ex-military." It sounds better than the truth, which is that he used to be a salad chef whose restaurant went bankrupt, Doesn't Like Guns and has never thrown a punch in his life.
• Embarrassing Nickname: Benny Krill earns the nickname "Blister" after scalding his buttocks in a pot of hot soup while trying to burglarize the kitchen of a homeless shelter.
• Even Evil Has Standards: Dominick "Big Noogie" Aeola is probably the nicest Mafia capo you could ever meet:
  • When Martin Trebeaux employs the "comfort animal" scam to get himself and Big Noogie preferred seating on an airplane, Big Noogie calls him "the scum of the scum"; though not a pet lover himself, even Big Noogie is disgusted when, after Trebeaux's fake service dog wanders off, Trebeaux shrugs off the loss and proposes picking up a new one on the way to the airport.
  • Big Noogie retrieves the original service dog himself and adopts it; though he does this mainly to please his girlfriend, he finds himself enjoying the complimentary attention from passers-by in Key West and makes sure to order extra bacon at breakfast for the dog.
  • Unlike many mafiosos, he has no problem with Key West's "gay scene", though he draws the line when his girlfriend suggests going into one of the dance clubs.
  • Walking to a meeting on the beach without a beach umbrella, he buys a spare from an elderly tourist couple; they would have given it to him for free (even without knowing that he's a mafioso), but he insists on paying for it.
• Everyone Has Standards: Loveable Rogue Merry Mansfield spends an evening with the talent agent whose car she purposely crashed into, and watches a YouTube video of his client trying to win over the crowd in a Key West bar with racist, homophobic jokes:
  Merry: The dude's a total homophobe! Also a bigot.
  Lane Coolman: There's a culture gap, that's all.
  Merry: No, it's a decency gap, Bob! Your client's a flaming a-hole! What's the matter with you? I'm so disappointed.
  Coolman had received other morality lectures, though never from a professional criminal.
• Excrement Statement: Benny "Blister" Krill, insulted that a California talent agency has sent a vice president instead of the chairman to Florida to negotiate with him, emphasizes his right to "respect" by taking the proposed deal memorandum, wiping his ass with it, then returning it to the vice president's briefcase.
• Expectation Lowerer: In-Universe. The Reality Show Bayou Brethren:
  The show's producers had strategically cultivated a fandom with two distinct segments: those who were cynically amused by the boorish culture of the Nance Clan; and those who identified with it. It was a precarious tightwire.
• Feet of Clay: Benny "Blister" Krill kidnaps Reality Show star Buck Nance in the expectation that they will become best friends, and is disappointed and confused when Buck insists that his real name is Matthew Romberg and that the show is "just a fucking act". Blister gets especially confused after Matthew/Buck refuses to join in on Blister's racist tirade to their Cuban limousine driver.
• The Ghost: Buck and Crystal Nance, the stars of the Reality Show Bayou Brethren, have two adult sons who are not interested in appearing on the show, and so are never mentioned while the cameras are rolling. Most of the series' fans have no idea that they even exist.
• Heel Realization: Buck Nance, f.k.a. Matthew Romburg, admits that his father raised him and his brothers to be "racist dickheads", and is more than happy to accept fame and fortune from his TV role as a redneck chicken farmer, but is genuinely sickened at what his self-proclaimed "biggest fan", Blister, has done to impress him, and realizes that "it was one thing to market a television program to attract low-class shit-kickers; it was another thing to create them."
• Horrible Hollywood:
  • Lane Coolman and his boss, Jon "Amp" Ampergrodt regard their star clients, the Romburg/Nance brothers as Human Resources that make them all rich, and their Reality Show as a ratings vehicle that benefits from the growing jealousy and resentment between its stars. After Buck Nance disappears in Key West, the network immediately implements plans to film the next episode without him, and Amp has the idea of introducing Buck's formerly-secret mistress as a "character" on the show and encouraging her to transfer her affections to one of the other brothers, to create even more sordid family drama.
    Miracle's illicit affair with Junior had added a magic spark of toxicity. During the most recent taping, Buddy had thrown a Dewar's bottle at Junior's head, while Clee Roy had stolen Junior's iPhone to leer at a picture of Miracle's bare ass that Junior had snapped in the outdoor shower. Meanwhile the Nance wives were in a frothing riot of jealousy and spite. It was magnificent television.
  • Not to mention that the whole purpose of Bayou Brethren was to chase the fad of Duck Dynasty popularity and appeal to the racist segment of the population who were upset by "the election of a black president".
• Human Resources: after his restaurant goes bankrupt, salad chef Prawney works out, shaves his head and gets hired as a bodyguard; he Doesn't Like Guns and has never thrown a punch in his life, but is much in demand with his security company's clients, because "white celebrities always wanted big, shiny black muscle. It was a status thing."
• Ignored Expert: Played for Black Comedy. The endocrinologist hired to study the side effects of a weird brand of combination deodorant/erectile dysfunction remedy (causing unwanted hair growth, a wilder sex drive, skin bulges and other problems) is ignored by the lawyer who hired him to make that report. It takes the lawyer, Brock Richardson, months to even read the expert brief about the product he is launching a class action suit against and once he does he's too hooked on the sex drive part to stop in spite of the warnings about how much worse it will get.
• Innocent Bigot: Thoroughly deconstructed. Matthew Romburg and his three brothers were raised by a vehemently racist father, and Matthew acknowledges that he and his brothers are all "racist dickheads", but defends that they aren't "in-your-face racist dickheads" - meaning they keep their mouths shut and their heads down unless they're certain it's safe to spout off their bigoted views, either in each other's company or during the phony "sermons" that Matthew (as "Buck Nance") delivers at his Reality Show's phony church to a phony congregation. Buck is horrified when one of these sermons inspires his self-proclaimed "biggest fan", Blister Krill, to commit a hate crime that kills an innocent Muslim tourist, but quickly disclaims any responsibility ("Hey, I had nothing to do with it.")
• Karmic Death: The Romburg brothers' vehemently racist father died of a massive heart attack while trying to scrape an "Obama For President" sticker off a neighbor's bumper in the middle of an ice storm.
• Karmic Jackpot: Andrew Yancy notices a stray dog wander into traffic and dashes after it; it turns out to belong to Mafia capo "Big Noogie" Aeola, who is not a pet lover himself, but is wary enough of his girlfriend's reaction if the dog was lost that he promises Yancy a future favor; Yancy calls it in to finally secure ownership of the lot neighboring his home, on which the previous owners have been trying to build eyesore "McMansions".
• Kicked Upstairs: After the "major disappointment" of the pilot episode of the Reality Show Bayou Brethren, the network vice president who thought viewers would find pig farming fun to watch is "summarily promoted to a more harmless position."
• Lovable Rogue: Merry Mansfield, the titular "Razor Girl": her "profession" is deliberately crashing into cars on the highway, distracting their drivers long enough for them to be abducted by loan sharks or mafiosos they owe money to, but all of her "targets" are sleazeballs (even the one she hits by accident), and she is very proud of the fact that she never injures any of them in the crash; when one of her targets is caught with his pet cat for company, she offers to refund her entire fee to the mob if they promise not to hurt it.
• Moral Myopia:
  • Lane Coolman gets infuriated every time his wife cheats on him and shares the salacious details, even though he's fully aware she only does it as retaliation for his own infidelities.
  • When Blister, who believes he's being offered a role on the Reality Show Bayou Brethren, starts openly speculating which of his future (fake) brothers' wives is most "hot and doable", Buck testily reminds Blister that he's married. Buck himself has been cheating on his wife for years, but Blister's open leering is too disgusting even for him.
• Named After Somebody Famous: Merry claims her last name is Mansfield, "like the actress."
• No Accounting for Taste: Attorney Brock Richardson represents the plaintiffs in a class-action suit against a "combination deodorant and testosterone wipe"; the defendants included Ben Affleck, who lent his voice to the TV commercials, but Affleck was dismissed from the suit by a judge who happened to be "a die-hard fan of Gigli."
• Pandering to the Base: In-Universe. Matthew Romberg and his brothers Bradley, Henry, and Todd, needed a "makeover" to become the rural Deep South "Nance Brothers", which included having their teeth artificially darkened by a Malibu orthodontist, speech lessons from a Cajun dialect coach, and learning a series of "rural skills, as prioritized by the show's Manhattan-born set designer", including chewing tobacco, shooting guns and riding motorcycles. The result is less an authentic representation of rural life in the Deep South as a caricature of same, mocked up to pander to the national stereotype of redneck hillbillies. Deconstructed by Hiaasen in an interview about the book:
  Being a white guy from the South, I find it amazing that so many TV viewers are enchanted by beards, bad dentistry and moonshine accents. Also there’s this false notion that this is a regional phenomenon, when in fact every state in the union has hardcore rednecks. No exceptions.
• Porn Names: Several of Hiaasen's female characters adopt "shamelessly porny name[s]", not because they are literally entering the sex industry, but as a way of advertising their sexuality in order to boost their public images; Buck Nance's mistress goes by the "porny name of Miracle" (her real name is never revealed).
• The Power of Language: As part of his act as a Reality Show "redneck chicken plucker", Matthew Romburg/Buck Nance gives phony sermons at a phony church to a phony congregation; some of his "sermons" are too coarse and racist even for the show, so instead they get bootlegged on YouTube and attract plenty of views from the show's more racist fans. To Matthew/Buck, it is all fake, and he is genuinely horrified when his self-proclaimed biggest fan decides to "impress" him by committing a hate crime that kills an innocent Muslim tourist;
• Reality Is Unrealistic:
  • During the development phase of Bayou Brethren, the network tried casting genuine rural pig farmers, but "the unsavory auditions [dragged] on for months", and eventually the Romberg brothers were cast, because their long, flowing beards and racist banter made them look enough like Deep South rednecks, while they had just enough education (i.e., they all went to college) to appreciate concepts like punctuality and taking stage direction.
  • The show does its best to make the Nance Brothers' supposed profession - breeding roosters to use their feathers in fly-fishing lures - seem glamorous, but none of the Nance brothers will even approach the rooster farm unless cameras are rolling, "because of the stench." Matthew/Buck uses his role as the show's star to insist that his handling of actual fowl be kept to an absolute minimum, and that his scenes be shot using CGI whenever possible.
• Recurring Character: Several of the supporting cast of Bad Monkey reappear in Razor Girl. Some characters "recur" by never appearing, but by being mentioned by others in passing.
• Refuge in Audacity: Merry Mansfield, the titular "Razor Girl", has perfected a "signature"' crime, crashing into cars on purpose while holding a safety razor and having her pants partially pulled down, pretending to have been distracted by giving herself a bikini shave while driving. Since her "targets" are always men, they cannot help but be distracted long enough to be snatched by Merry's employers. As she explains to Lane Coolman:
  Coolman: Why not just wear a super-short skirt for the crash? The snatch-shaving thing, that's pretty twisted.
  Merry: These days you need more than a great pair of legs, Bob. You need to boggle their little minds.
  • Likewise, she is quite upfront with both Coolman and Andrew Yancy about her work as a con artist, knowing that if they try to turn her in, no one would believe them.
• Revenge Romance: Lane Coolman considers his estranged wife Rachel "the undisputed queen of the revenge fuck, in a town^note Los Angeles with many contenders for the title."
• Rich in Dollars, Poor in Sense: Miami attorney Brock Richardson gives his fiancee an engagement ring set with a $200,000 diamond, but since it was originally sized for his previous fiancee, it falls off her finger and is lost almost immediately; naturally he was too lazy or too cheap to insure it.
• Ripped from the Headlines: Razor Girl was inspired by the real-life incident of Megan Barnes, who crashed her car on the Florida Overseas Highway after taking her hands off the wheel to shave her bikini zone.
• Royal "We": subverted slightly; when a character wants to intimidate another, or dodge responsibility (or both), he or she will often use the Royal "We", claiming to be speaking on behalf of others. Talent agent Jon David "Amp" Ampergrodt, sensing that his subordinate, Coolman, is angling to assume a more prestigious credit on their star client's reality show, tries to reject his request: "Associate producer, that's the best we can do for you."
• Smooth-Talking Talent Agent: Lane Coolman, reality television star Buck Nance's agent, plays every role necessary to keep his client happy ("manager, confidante, pimp, shepherd"), but his "laser focus" on Buck's well-being is strictly limited to his status as Coolman's "meal ticket";
  • When Buck disappears in Key West, Coolman finds the possibility of him being dead less troubling than the possibility that he has found another agent;
  • Called to a crime scene to view what he believes is going to be Buck's dead body, Coolman bitterly reflects, "Self-destruction was acceptable in show business when your career was tanking, but not while you're starring in America's hottest cable show."
• Society Is to Blame: Subverted. In nearly all of Hiaasen's novels, there is at least one villainous or criminal character whose backstory makes clear that they started out with affectionate parents, good teachers, and no obvious trauma or temptation towards criminality, and yet they become criminals anyway, largely because they are too lazy to pay attention in school or hold legitimate jobs: Benny "Blister" Krill has several siblings with legitimate jobs and healthy lifestyles, but Benny becomes a "hopelessly incompetent" burglar; his mother claims that his brain was affected from breathing toxic fumes from a paper mill upwind of their home, but none of his siblings seem to have been affected.
• Stalker with a Crush: Benny "Blister" Krill towards Buck Nance (the protagonist describes his infatuation as a "man crush");
• Sub-Par Supremacist:
  Spending time with Benny the Blister had shaken Buck Nance's confidence in the superiority of the white male. He and his brothers had clung to such views since their Romberg youth, warped by their father's fulminations. While redneck stardom had exposed Buck to many white fans who were poor advertisements for a master race, Blister stood out as one of the worst specimens he'd ever met: stupid, reckless, dirty, and delusional. And that's when he was stone sober.
• Take That!: Razor Girl is a swipe at "reality" TV shows and the dangers of rabid fanbases taking said shows too seriously.
• Taught by Television: Having watched every single episode of Bayou Brethen "no less than fifty times", Blister fancies he knows everything that is important to know about poultry farming, Cajun cooking, stand-your-ground laws, and Islamic extremism, based on Buck or some other character's random comment on the subject.
• There Should Be a Law: Reality Show star Buck Nance's bootleg "sermons" are too racist to be aired on his show but find their way onto YouTube and are eagerly devoured by the show's hardcore fans, at least one of whom tries to impress Buck by committing a hate crime in Key West that ends with the death of a Muslim tourist. The protagonist, Andrew Yancy, is profoundly depressed that Buck is "a septic inspiration to impressionable mouth breathers", yet there is no law that will hold him accountable for the actions of his fans.
• The Thing That Would Not Leave: Hilariously, gloriously inverted. After one casual dinner date, Merry Mansfield invites herself to stay at Yancy's home. He tries to kick her out once, and she comes back the next day. Being in a relationship (even if his girlfriend is traveling abroad and might not come back), he knows he should get rid of her, and that if he really tried he could get rid of her... but he doesn't. The fact that he tries to stay faithful to his absent girlfriend only charms Merry more, and makes her that much more determined to seduce him.
  Merry told him to quit moping. "For God's sake, I just showed you my tits."
  "And adorable they are."
  "Animal!" she snapped, then dissolved to a giggle when she saw his expression. "You don't know what to do with me, do you? I love that!"
• This Is a Work of Fiction: Hiaasen likes to have fun with this trope.
  ...However, true events in South Florida provided the lurid material for certain strands of this novel, beginning with the opening scene. The author also wishes he'd dreamed up the part about the giant Gambian pouched rats, but he didn't. Those suckers are real.
• Too Dumb to Live:
  • Merry's accomplice, Juan Zeto-Fernandez, drives a Tesla loaned to him by a fugitive friend; when the car's charger doesn't fit into the electrical socket he's found, he tries to re-shape the plug ends with a pair of pliers, completely ignorant of the adapter and the instruction manual sitting on the car's backseat. He also happens to be kneeling in a water puddle when he jams the plug into the socket.
    Andrew Yancy: It takes a special kind of moron to electrocute yourself with a Tesla.
    Rogelio Burton: A Darwin finalist.
  • Martin Trebeaux, having narrowly talked his way out of being executed after supplying faulty sand to a Mafia-operated beachfront hotel, recklessly decides to have a wild fling with the girlfriend of the capo supervising him. It doesn't end well for him.
• Viewers Are Morons: In-Universe. The creators of the Reality Show Bayou Brethren, about a family of rural chicken farmers, deliberately target "a fandom with two distinct segments: those who were cynically amused by the boorish culture of the Nance Clan, and those who identified with it." Both segments seem unaware that the show is entirely fake, and the redneck "Nance brothers" were actually born in a suburb of Milwaukee, attended college, and toured the South as an accordion band before being cast on the show.
• We Are Everywhere: To the producers of Bayou Brethren, the show's fanbase can be divided into "two distinct segments: those who were cynically amused by the boorish culture of the Nance clan, and those who identified with it" - i.e., between educated sophisticates who wink and laugh at the actors' Deep South antics, and rural hillbillies who see themselves in those antics. But even Coolman and Amp are unsettled by the fact that Buck seems to have admirers everywhere. During a joyride aboard the network's private jet over the Keys, Blister proudly shows off his "HAIL CAPTAIN COCK" tattoo, and the "prim-looking flight attendant" bursts out, "oh, yeah, baby!"
• "Where Are They Now?" Epilogue: A staple of Hiaasen's novels.
• You Can Keep Him: Talent agent Lane Coolman is abducted by mistake, causing him to miss his meeting with his star client, Buck Nance (who inadvertently provokes a riot and flees onto the streets in terror). Once the kidnappers realize they've grabbed the wrong guy, one of them is all for killing Lane and dumping his body, but Lane swears that his talent agency will pay a ransom to get him back. The kidnappers let him call his boss - who hangs up on him once it's ascertained that he isn't with Buck and has no idea how to find him.
• Your Approval Fills Me with Shame: Buck Nance, the star of Bayou Brethren, has met "many white fans who were poor advertisements for a master race", his self-proclaimed biggest fan, Blister Krill, is such a vile specimen that Buck starts to question continuing with his TV career; then Blister commits a hate crime that kills an innocent Muslim bystander and stabs a police officer, both based on what he believes are Buck's "teachings." at the end of the novel, Buck quits television, reverts to his birth name and moves back to his hometown of Milwaukee to open a music store.

---