Florida Continues To Inspire Carl Hiaasen In New Novel 'Razor Girl'

Carl Hiaasen finds endless inspiration for his Miami Herald columns — and well over a dozen novels — in the often wacky headlines of his home state, Florida.

He joins Here & Now's Robin Young to talk about Florida, its possible role in the presidential election and his latest novel, "Razor Girl."

On the news story that helped inspire his new novel

"[A woman] was doing some personal grooming while she was driving and she crashed into a car full of tourists. So one of my sons sent me that clipping and I saved it, of course, trying in some deprived ways to fit it into a novel. First of all, how do you improve on it in fiction? Where would it go? So why don't I just start the book with something like that, and see what happens.

In Florida because of the public records law, all restaurant inspections can be looked up online. I go out to eat all the time and the food's great. But if you wanna find something that will make you want to sleep with the lights on, just read a few of these reports from some of the sketchier places and then I take my character Andrew Yancy and put him in this situation. He was a hot-shot detective working on like real crime, and now he's literally counting cockroach wings on roach patrol."

"If you're writing satire, you're trying to stay ahead of the absurdity and sometimes it catches up with you. And this is the year I think it's catching up."

Carl Hiaasen

On being a columnist

"It's just poking a little harmless fun at hollow politicians — there's no shortage of them. Part of the job of a columnist is to stay on top of the news. And the fact is, the whole idea that we're tracking a mosquito, and that you can trap these mosquitoes for instance. What they're doing now is just carpet bombing at the mosquitoes and praying that they'll kill most of them.

But you know how many mosquitoes there are? There's something surreal about this whole battle because in the first week Zika breaks out, they run a map saying, 'Don't worry, this is the only place we found them.' And it's a perfectly square piece with blocks like 'Mosquitoes aren't going to cross this street,' 'Don't worry they're not going to fly there — they're going to stay right within the parameters here.' I mean, it's just kind of... you have to look at it with some sort of humor, because it is kind of silly."

On how his novel's satire relates to the real world

"If you write satire, you're looking at the whole big picture — what's going on in the country — and that whole section of the novel was devised and written long before the Republican Convention that summer when one of the actual 'Duck Dynasty' guys gets up and addresses the Grand Old Party of the United States... If you're writing satire, you're trying to stay ahead of the absurdity and sometimes it catches up with you. And this is the year I think it's catching up.

What I think is a real phenomenon is that all the talk and the hate and bigotry that you stir up with rhetoric sometime comes home with the roost. And in this particular character, who is really just trying to make a buck on TV, he's now facing somebody who's really dangerous who thinks everything he says is gospel."

Note: The excerpt below contains some explicit language.

By Carl Hiaasen

On the first day of February, sunny but cold as a frog’s balls, a man named Lane Coolman stepped off a flight at Miami International, rented a mainstream Buick and headed south to meet a man in Key West. He nearly made it.

Twenty-seven miles from Coolman’s destination, an old green Firebird bashed his car from behind. The impact failed to trigger the Buick’s airbags, but Coolman heard the rear bumper dragging. He steered off the highway and dialed 911. In the mirror he saw the Firebird, its grille crimped and steaming, pull onto the shoulder. Ahead stood a sign that read: “Ramrod Key.”

Coolman went to check on the other driver, a woman in her mid-thirties with red hair.

“Super-duper sorry,” she said.

“What the hell happened?”

“Just a nick. Barely bleeding.” She held her phone in one hand and a disposable razor in the other.

“Are you out of your mind?” said Coolman.

The driver’s jeans and panties were bunched around her knees. She’d been shaving herself when she smashed Coolman’s rental car.

“I got a date,” she explained.

“You couldn’t take care of that at home?”

“No way! My husband would get so pissed.”

“Unreal,” said Coolman.

The woman was wearing a maroon fleece jacket and rhinestone flip-flops. On her pale thigh was the razor mark.

“How about a little privacy?” she said. “I’m not quite done here.”

Coolman walked back to the Buick and called the man he was supposed to meet in Key West. “I’ll be a few minutes late. You’re not gonna believe what just happened,” he said on the man’s voicemail, leaving it at that.

The cops arrived and wrote up the red-haired pube shaver for careless driving. Naturally, she had no collision insurance; that would be Avis’s problem, not Lane Coolman’s. A tow truck hauled away the Firebird, which needed a new front end including a radiator. The woman approached Coolman and asked for a ride.

“Tell your ‘date’ to come get you,” he said. One of the police officers had pried the damaged bumper from the Buick, and Coolman was trying to fit it into the backseat.

“He doesn’t have a car,” said the woman, who’d buttoned her jeans. She was attractive in a loose and scattered way. Coolman had a weakness for redheads.

“See, I work for an escort service. We go to where the client’s at,” she said.

“Yes, I understand the concept.”

The woman’s fleece was unzipped and beneath it she wore a black sequined top. Her toes must be freezing in those flip-flops, Coolman thought; the temperature was 55 degrees with a biting north wind, arctic conditions for the Florida Keys.

“My name’s Merry,” she said, “spelled like Merry Christmas.”

“My name’s Bob,” said Coolman, “spelled like Bob.”

“Does that mean you’ll give me a lift?”

“Why not,” Coolman said, the worst mistake he would ever make.

At Mile Marker 22, Merry told him her last name was Mansfield, like the bombshell actress of the Fifties. Coolman stopped at a Circle K where he got a cup of coffee and Merry bought three eight-hour energy drinks, chugging the little purple bottles one after the other.

“You running a marathon?” Coolman asked.

“I’m all about performance.”

At Mile Marker 17, she told him she didn’t really work for an escort service.

“Wild guess—you’re a dancer,” he said.

“On my own time,” she replied. “Not one of those.”

“I didn’t mean it in a bad way.”

“Why didn’t you just say stripper? The games you guys play, I swear.” Her eyelashes were a paler shade of red than her hair.

Coolman said, “Why would you make up a lie about being an escort?”

“ ’Cause I needed a ride, Bob. If I said I was an artifacts appraiser you would’ve left me standing in the road.”

“What is it you appraise?”

“Sunken treasure. Doubloons and cannonballs and so forth. Business is slow right now. I’m an expert on eighteenth-century Spanish maritime.”

“Do you have a real date, or did you make up that part, too?”

Merry laughed. “He’s an Air Force pilot based at Boca Chica. Why else would I be doin’ my trim at sixty-five miles per hour?”

At Mile Marker 8, she blurted, “Did I say Air Force? I meant Navy.” She was buzzing like a flagpole in a lightning storm. “His name’s Rocky.”

“What about your husband?”

“He’s a Rocky, too.”

“Stop,” said Coolman.

“Don’t be judging me. I go for men with strong names.”

The closer they got to Key West, the more Southern her accent became. Coolman was foolishly intrigued.

“What about you?” she said. “What’s your field, Bob? Your expertise.”

“I’m in the entertainment business. I manage talent.”

“Your own, or somebody else’s?”

“Ever seen the show Bayou Brethren?” Coolman asked.

“Little Rocky watches it all the time.”

“That’s your son? Little Rocky?”

“No, it’s what I call my husband. Don’t make me spell out why.”

“Anyway, I manage Buck. You know—the family patriarch? Buck Nance.”

“No shit?”

“Leader of the clan,” said Coolman.

“Yeah, Bob, I know what a fucking patriarch is.”

The show was taped in the Florida Panhandle at a swampy location that somewhat resembled a Louisiana bayou. Buck Nance and his brothers were actually from Wisconsin, but the network paid for a Cajun dialogue coach.

Merry said, “So what brings you all the way down here?”

“Buck has a personal appearance.”

“Where?”

“Parched Pirate.”

“Doing what?”

“Just being Buck.”

Coolman hoped the guitar player had found the bar. Buck Nance had trouble speaking in public unless he was accompanied by a live musician. For his road gigs the writers at the network had come up with eight or nine amusing redneck stories, what you might call a monologue, and afterward Buck would take questions for ten minutes or so. The questions were printed on index cards distributed in advance to random fuckwits in the crowd.

Coolman offered to take Merry to the show. “We’ll hang backstage,” he added. Like there was a backstage.

“What about my date?” she asked.

“Bail,” Coolman said. “Tell him the truth—you had car trouble.”

“But then I shaved down there for no reason.”

“Not necessarily.”

The redhead smiled and shook her head. “For the Zac Brown Band I’d ditch my Navy boy in a heartbeat, but not for some yahoo from the bayou.”

“It’s only the top-rated cable program in the whole country.”

“I prefer the nature channels. You know—penguins and cheetahs. Shit like that.”

“Buck converted his Bentley to an ATV with rifle racks.”

“Why would a grown man do something so ridiculous?”

“America worships the guy. You should come hear him tonight.”

“Another time,” said Merry.

At Mile Marker 5, she made a call on her cell phone. All she said was, “Don’t wet yourself, sugar. I’m almost there.”

At Mile Marker 4, after they’d crossed the bridge into Key West, she flipped open the visor mirror and checked her makeup. Freshened her lipstick. Brushed her hair.

“You look terrific,” said Coolman.

“Damn right, Bob.”

At Mile Marker 3, she exclaimed, “Okay, pull in here!”

It was a small shopping center with a Sears as the high point. Merry directed Coolman where to park. He was surprised when a white Tesla rolled up beside them.

“That’s your boyfriend?” Coolman knew a couple of CAA agents back in L.A. who drove jet-black Teslas. The white model looked pretty sweet. Coolman himself leased a corpuscle-red Mercedes SLK 350 that required no electric outlet.

“I thought you said he didn’t have wheels.”

Merry shrugged. “Must be a loaner.”

The young man who got out of the Tesla was wearing a leather bomber jacket. If not for the gold earring and oily long hair he could have been a Navy pilot.

“It was nice meeting you,” Coolman said to the redhead.

“Oh, you’re coming with.”

“Me? What for?”

The man in the bomber jacket yanked open Coolman’s door and put a pistol to his neck.

“Let’s go, dipshit.”

“Just take my wallet,” Coolman said, breathless. “The Rolex, too, whatever you want.”

“You’re adorable, Bob,” the woman whispered. “Now get out of the fucking car.”

Excerpted from the book RAZOR GIRL by Carl Hiaasen. Copyright © 2016 by Carl Hiaasen. All rights reserved. Reprinted with permission of Alfred A. Knopf.

Carl Hiaasen, Miami Herald columnist and author. His latest novel is "Razor Girl." He tweets @Carl_Hiaasen.