Strip Tease

The mystery of why every single Carl Hiaasen book hasn't been made into a movie has finally been solved. Suffice it to say that Mr. Hiaasen should be allowed to slap Demi Moore until her head falls off, and his readers should have the right to go Skink on anyone else who took part in the debacle that was "Strip Tease" the movie.Unbeknownst to stripper Erin Grant, she is at the center of a big cover-up the night one drunk beats up another with a champagne bottle while she's onstage. The bottle wielder is none other than US Congressman David Dilbeck, who heads the committee that keeps sugar prices artificially high and ensuring fat profits for corporate sugar farmers, who in turn pay their workers disgustingly low wages. Dilbeck is recognized by one customer who is so infatuated with Erin he offers to blackmail the congressman into helping her get custody of her daughter, which she lost in the divorce because of the job she had to take in order to pay her attorney fees. When the customer disappears, his body later found by Florida detective Al Garcia while on vacation in Montana, Garcia links the death to a missing attorney and his cousin, who happened to be the fiancée of the man who was bludgeoned by Dilbeck with the champagne bottle. At the same time, the bouncer at Erin's strip club, the Eager Beaver, had been attempting to earn a huge settlement by planting a roach in a carton of yogurt. His attorney happened to be the same one who went missing. Erin's ex also goes off the deep end, his drug habit and wheelchair stealing getting out of control as he gets closer and closer to losing it. There's quite a cast of characters, between the bigshots behind the scenes keeping Dilbeck's career on track to the cast of dancers and crooked managers of both the Eager Beaver and its rival club, the Flesh Farm. It's great entertainment all the way, which just makes me wonder how the unskilled moron who hacked this book into a screenplay managed to miss it all and come up with the script that made it to the big screen.Maybe I was a little prejudiced because of that awful excuse for a movie, but it took me a few chapters to really get into this book. Erin was a bit much of a powerless victim at the beginning, but once she gets mad enough to start taking some drastic action, things get going and this wound up being one of my favorite Hiaasen novels. It's got everything we expect from him: a convoluted plot full of off-the-wall characters and plenty of laughs. It even managed to overcome the stigma of sharing a title with the worst movie I have ever seen.

I've never seen the movie. Film clips showing Burt Reynolds in cowboy boots, cowboy hat and towel didn't entice me. Neither did reports of Demi Moore's newly sculpted body, which I thought had been perfectly fine without surgical enhancements.But having recently been hooked on Carl Hiaasen's writing, I picked up the novel -- without, oddly enough, even realizing the movie connection until I was a solid 100 pages or more along. Fortunately, by that point I already had my own vision of the principal characters and didn't have to picture Burt and Demi in those roles.The movie was critically panned and a box-office flop. The novel, on the other hand, is an exceptional read.Erin Grant is a stripper in a south Florida bar. A former secretary with the FBI, she took up the new career because she needed the income to fight her vile, larcenous ex-husband -- and his pet judge -- for custody of their 4-year-old daughter.David Dilbeck is a Florida politician with a growing inventory of secret sexual perversities -- and, after a bottle-wielding brawl at the Eager Beaver, his lust for Erin Grant grows rapidly into obsession.Meanwhile, a Florida homicide detective vacationing in Montana discovers a body floating in the water -- and the corpse just happens to have been a big fan of Erin's body of work, as well as a witness to Dilbeck's fit of indecorous behavior. One of the strippers keeps seeing famous people in the audience. A pet snake dies. A pack of rats is set free. And Shad, the Eager Beaver's burly bouncer, has hidden a very large cockroach in a container of yogurt.Without spiraling out of control, the story grows to include a dogged investigator operating outside his jurisdiction, erotic creamed corn and linguini wrestling, an ongoing wheelchair scam, mutilated Barbie dolls, an over-his-head litigator and the powerful Florida sugar industry.The various threads of the story come together as beautifully as Erin's outfits come apart. While in some ways a suspenseful thriller and, in others, a family drama, the story at the same time is innately funny. It all fits into a single yarn, tightly woven and colorfully devised.It's a rare treat to discover so talented and entertaining a writer who's so well established, with an impressive library of novels already available on the shelves. Hiaasen has a wry sense of satirical humor in his writing, and his stories are intelligent and obviously well researched. I look forward to continuing my exploration of his works.by Tom Knapp, Rambles.(net) editor

Who could resist the heroine of this novel — a stripper who loves to dance and almost forgets that she’s naked while doing it? Erin Grant used to be an FBI secretary, but makes more money stripping, and needs the money to pay her lawyer in the custody fight for her 4-year-old daughter. Erin’s ex is one of the despicable characters in the story — a junkie with violent tendencies who steals wheelchairs for a living.The plot is a feast of corrupt politics, legal blackmail, and well-intentioned fraud. At center stage of the dirty politics are a lustful congressman and the creepy “fixer” who keeps his image bright and clean.Representing order and law are a Cuban detective who smokes smelly cigars and sniffs out murders that were never meant to surface — and a gentleman bouncer who respects the strippers he protects.Carl Hiaasen’s sardonic, oddball humor emerges on every page. He portrays good and evil with equal relish. Every character in the story is a masterpiece of literary flair and fun. Hiaasen is clearly amusing himself, and the reader is entertained along with him.Strip Tease is one of Hiaasen’s best books.

I love strong female leads and Erin delivered over and over and over again.However, what is with Hiaasen's obsession with his villains having one arm hurt or broken?Double Whammy - it was a dead dog's head attached to an arm.Strip Tease - Erin's husband was given a compound fracture to one arm.And I read a synopsis of another book and someone found a severed arm?Anyway, I'm going to probably read all his books because they are so much fun.

The Book arrived in excellent condition - good as new. Great price & very speedy delivery. What more can you ask for ?!!Another fantastic Carl Hiaasen novel, as per usual. I have read loads of them already - I'm a HUGE Fan !! (-:

Great fun. Highly imaginative. An enormous cast of characters, many of them quite zany, become entangled in a series of adventures and misadventures that follows an unfortunate incident in a striptease dancing club in Florida.Review by the author of ALIWAL.

Excellent book

Brilliant. Just get on and read it.

good