Unfortunately, after completing one such abduction on the Overseas Highway, Merry discovers that she and her accomplice "Zeto" have snatched the wrong person: Lane Coolman, a Los Angeles talent manager on his way to Key West to supervise a live appearance by his firm's most important client, reality television star Buck Nance.
Without Coolman present, Buck, who is unprepared to give an improvised performance, resorts to telling jokes overheard from his brothers which contain racist and homophobic slurs.
While waiting for their real target, Merry and Zeto let Coolman call his boss, Jon "Amp" Ampergrodt, who is indifferent to his safety but discreetly asks Monroe County Sheriff Sonny Summers to start a search for Buck.
They present their demands to Amp, who cannot afford to ignore Coolman's threat to make Buck and his "brother" the stars of a rival spin-off that will eclipse Bayou Brethren in popularity.
The novel incorporates at least three interconnected subplots: Buck becomes a national hero for his actions in Florida, but he has had enough of celebrity - estranged from his family, harried by his captivity, and badly shaken by the realization that his TV persona has become a role model for violent racists like Blister.
Janet Maslin favorably reviewed Razor Girl for the New York Times, stating that the novel "meets [Hiaasen's] usual sky-high standards for elegance, craziness, and mike-drop humor.
And even if Blister is the only crazed fan turned abductor with a shot at having his own role on a hit reality show, the book makes it clear that he is not alone in his delusions.
His stories are as intricate as they are fast-paced, and the sheer number of characters he includes in each book makes summarizing them next to impossible, unless you want to sound like a stoner describing The Big Lebowski to a friend who's never seen it.
So let's just say that when all is said and done, the reader has been introduced to countless crooks and lowlifes, an elderly man who dies of a heart attack while trying to scrape an Obama bumper sticker off his neighbor's car, a thief with an ill-tempered pet mongoose, a drug that causes "random tissue deformities and life-threatening erections," and more Gambian pouched rats than you've probably ever read about.
"[4] Booklist also praised the audiobook version for its deft handling of the book's myriad plot-lines, and the performance of multiple character voices by the reader, John Rubinstein.