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.
Starred review from July 1, 2016
Rejoice, fans of American madness who've sought fulfillment in political reportage. South Florida's master farceur (Skink--No Surrender, 2014, etc.) is back to reassure you that fiction is indeed stranger than truth.Even though a prefatory note indicates that both the come-hither title and the stuff about giant Gambian pouched rats are rooted in reality, no one but Hiaasen could have dreamed up the complications arising from the collision of Merry Mansfield with talent agent Lane Coolman--a literal collision, since she rams his rented car while shaving her bikini area in the driver's seat of a Firebird. Make that multiple collisions, since Lane turns out to be only the latest victim of Merry and her partner Zeto's kidnap-for-hire schemes. In this case, he's the wrong victim, mistaken for beach-replenishment contractor Martin Trebeaux, whose swindling has put him on the wrong side of Calzone crime family capo Dominick "Big Noogie" Aeola. Since Coolman's being held captive, he can't be on hand to walk his client Buck Nance, the reality star of Bayou Brethren, though a personal appearance at the Parched Pirate, and Buck goes off script into a racist rant that sparks a demonstration and sends him fleeing, though he's still capable of inspiring Benny Krill, a murderous apprentice racist who dreams of joining him on his show. After laboring in vain to persuade Jon David Ampergrodt, his boss at Platinum Artists Management, as well as Merry and Zeto that he's worth ransoming, Coolman escapes, but it doesn't matter: he's still confined in the zoo that's Key West, where liability lawyer Brock Richardson's fiancee loses the $200,000 ring he didn't bother to resize after his fatter former fiancee returned it, and when his neighbor, health inspector Andrew Yancy, discovers it, he hides it in the hummus in the hope that an indefinite search for the bauble will stall Richardson's plan to build a McMansion that will obstruct Yancy's sea view. Etc. How can Hiaasen possibly tie together all this monkey business in the end? His delirious plotting is so fine-tuned that preposterous complications that would strain lesser novelists fit right into his antic world. Relax, enjoy, and marvel anew at the power of unbridled fictional invention.
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Starred review from June 1, 2016
Andrew Yancy (Bad Monkey, 2013) returns in this immensely entertaining wild ride through the Florida Keys. He is still doing penance as a health inspector on roach patrol for an earlier assault with a car vacuum. But when the star of a redneck reality show called Bayou Brethren goes missing, Yancy sees a chance to win back his real cop job at the sheriff's office. Merry Mansfield, the Razor Girl, is sharp, that's for sure, and one of the coolest characters Hiaasen has ever brought to the page. She runs car-crash scams but has the proverbial heart of gold, which lands her bejeweled flip-flops in a diabolically complicated story that includes (and often skewers) phony reality shows and the fine folks who bring them to us: goofball goodfellas; sand-restoration, reef-raiding scammers; an ill-fated, mongoose-owning stinky copycat psycho; a high-profile product-liability lawyer who's dangerously addicted to the very male-enhancement potion for which he recruits litigants in his TV commercials. And, oh yes, let's not forget an environmentally invasive infestation of Gambian pouched rats, electric cars, and cruise lines, along with Sharpie pens that create a male enhancement that perhaps only this author could dream up. Or maybe it is one of the true lurid Florida tales he claims to have incorporated into the story? This is the ultimate beach read for anyone with a taste for Hiaasen's skewed view of a Florida slouching toward Armageddon.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2016, American Library Association.)
April 15, 2016
Since this is Hiaasen, expect wild characters, starting with Razor Girl (aka Merry Mansfield), perpetrator of car-crash scams and linked to Andrew Yancy, who lost his detective badge after confronting his ex-lover's husband with a Dust Buster but seeks to get it back by solving a murder. With a 300,000-copy first printing and a nine-city tour.
Copyright 2016 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.
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.