Brain candy

 Just finished reading “Razor Girl” by Carl Hiaasen. This was after slogging through a biography of Augustus Caesar, so I was ready for something light. Razor Girl certainly filled the bill. The title refers to one Merry (“like in Merry Christmas”) Mansfield, who deliberately rear-ends moving vehicles, and when the male driver confronts her sitting in the driver’s seat, her skirt is hiked up and she’s in the process of shaving . . . well, you can guess. She repeats this stunt at various points in the novel, which earns her top billing.

The story is set in Florida, and is populated by a bunch of guys of the type who end up in articles that begin “Florida man . . . “ The various intertwining plots involve a reality show about fake chicken farmers called “Bayou Brethren,” a Mafioso nicknamed “Big Noogie,” a former police inspector who has been demoted to a restaurant health inspector, a crook who steals beach sand to sell to Miami beachfront hotels and an attorney who is organizing a class action suit against a manufacturer whose product is an underarm testosterone drug. There are cameo appearances by Gambian pouched rats, that end up serving as deus ex machina. And genitalia—mentions, descriptions and employment—pervade the narrative. Think of a mash-up of Dave Barry and Micheal Chabon.

This book is naughty and relentlessly funny. The various plots are hysterical and utterly implausible, and yet like the proverbial train wreck, you just can’t stop gawking.

And did I mention that my daughter gave me this book for fathers day without having read it first?