Like Bad Monkey, I got this book down in Clever in June, and I read them back to back, which is just as well as they feature the same characters. Well, a couple of them.
In this one, the agent of a cable television star who stars in a knock off of Duck Dynasty is in the keys to perform at a comedy club. But he’s an accordian player from Milwaukee (well, Whitefish Bay) only playing a redneck on television, and when his agent is accidentally kidnapped when a woman rear-ends his car whilst shaving her bikini area (we discover where the title comes from very early), the television star causes a near riot with, erm, jokes about gays and disfavored colloquialisms for black people in a club featuring many black gay men. So he, the television star, goes into hiding, and the agent is eventually helped out by the Razor Girl, but a big fan of the television star who wants to be more bigoted than his redneck hero kills a swarthy fellow on the tourist tram and ends up kidnapping his hero to become his friend. Meanwhile, there are some subplots about mobsters and recycled sand scams. Andrew Yancy’s girlfriend the coroner-turned-ER doctor flies to Europe to leave him behind. Yancy investigates the situation while trying to keep an attorney who is addicted to the hazardous aphrodisiac deodorant that he’s running television ads for class action lawsuits from building on the lot next to his house.
Again, a crash of various threads, characters, and zany situations where the mystery is solved in the middle of the book and the rest of it is resolution amongst the whacky characters.
Amusing; not a waste of time, but not high literature, and it has not overtaken in my heart the things I’ve read of his long ago from long ago.
But I know what you’re wondering:
- Trump? Yes, of course, but only a mention that someone has Trumpish lips. This book might have been written before he ran for president or during. Not when he somehow won.
- The baddest word? I thought that Hiaasen had given it up because he uses the N-word early in the book, but the redneck antagonist does, in fact, invoke the whole badness.
He has a later book, but it does not appear to be a Yancy title.
Apparently, Bad Monkey was turned into a television series just this fall and stars Vince Vaughn as Yancy. So it might be worth a watch when it comes out on DVD. Which is likely never, as most streaming does not.
