Carl Hiaasen brings back Andrew Yancy for another Florida caper

Carl Hiaasen’s Razor Girl is so twisted and kinky, it’s sure to leave readers wondering about the bestselling author.

Are Hiaasen’s lunatic characters a reflection of who he is as a person? Is the loopy plot a window into a warped soul?

Or is he merely an observant reporter, sharing insights about life in the strange state of Florida?

“If I were being honest, it’s probably a little of both,” Hiaasen says. “I poach shamelessly from the depraved headlines in Florida. I cut out news clippings and squirrel them away. The crazier, the better. I’m always trying to figure out ways to turn these nutty stories into subplots of a book.

“That said, I’m clearly not well. I’m not going to pretend I’m normal.”

One of Hiaasen’s hilarious headlines inspired the title character of Razor Girl. In 2010, a distracted woman driver wound up in a fender bender on the interstate because she was busy shaving her bikini area.

The author, in turn, gives us Merry Mansfield, a flaky yet insightful redhead who’s irresistible to men. She stages car crashes for insurance scammers and she does so while clutching a straight razor.

Merry likes to think of what she does as performance art.

Razor Girl, which comes out Tuesday, also features the return of Andrew Yancy, a fallen police detective now languishing as a put-upon restaurant health inspector. He was in 2013’s Bad Monkey.

Hiaasen’s story, which defies coherent summary, also includes a missing reality TV personality (an actor from Wisconsin who’s merely pretending to be a bayou chicken rancher); his unhinged No. 1 fan (the sublimely named Blister Krill, who abducts his idol in hopes of befriending him); and an odious businessman who combats the ongoing beach erosion problem by stealing sand from other beaches.

We chatted recently with the Florida-based newspaper-man-turned-novelist.

It’s doubtful the Florida Commission on Tourism will hire you as its go-to spokesperson. But I suspect that some tourists visit Florida hoping for a taste of the crazy culture they read about in your novels (and in books by Randy Wayne White, Dave Barry and Tim Dorsey). Your thoughts?

First of all, I’d be horrified if any chamber of commerce or tourism officials had me on speed dial. But the funny thing about Florida is that the more it’s portrayed as crazy — and really, it’s not much of an exaggeration — the more enticing it becomes to some people.

I’m not saying they want to come here to be among Zika mosquitoes. But remember when Miami Vice was the hottest show on television? Tourism officials were wringing their hands about the violent, decadent, corrupt portrayal of South Florida, but tourism went way up, especially from overseas.

You can tell people there are coke deals on every corner and guns in every car, and they’ll still come. Just don’t show them a photo of the algae blooms that have trashed out certain estuaries and bays.

You have a few favorite recurring characters who pop in on occasion, but you’ve never used a regular series character as your hero. So why bring Yancy back so soon?

Having a series character requires way more discipline than I have as a writer. I get antsy and I get restless. As a writer, you invent a cast of people and you live with them in your head for quite a while. As is sometimes the case with family, some of them are terrific, but you don’t want to spend more time with them.

I will fall back on some of the old-timers, like Skink, the Governor (beginning with 1987’s Double Whammy and most recently in 2014’s Skink: No Surrender, a young adult novel). But I’ve never had consecutive novels where I brought back the main character until Yancy.

I guess I just like him. I like his predicament: hotshot detective who’s now counting cockroach wings in restaurants. I like where he lives in the Lower Keys. I like Key West — it’s such a colorful place. And at the end of Bad Monkey, I wasn’t in a rush to say goodbye to him.

So I figured, what the hell. Bring him back. See how he does.

You mentioned lifting from Florida headlines for many of your subplots. So is it safe to assume, to cite just two examples, that beach erosion control really is a big industry that’s ripe for corruption and that Gambian pouched rats are a problem in the Keys?

The whole beach re-nourishment business is quite hilarious. If you have a hotel on waterfront property, you really don’t want waves crashing into your lobby. But the beaches erode 24/7.

As for the Gambian pouched rats, they’re in certain parts of the Keys. There was a time when people were importing them from Africa as pets and putting them on leashes. Every now and then, there’s a sighting and the people make it sound like they’ve seen a rat the size of a coyote.

So I went on Google and typed in “Gambian pouched rat” and found an image of a guy with one of these suckers on a pitchfork. I was like, “Oh, my god, that’s a rat and a half!” Well, I ask you: Could there be a more formidable foe for a restaurant health inspector?

This story was originally published August 31, 2016 at 10:39 AM with the headline "Carl Hiaasen brings back Andrew Yancy for another Florida caper."