by Monica Schwarze
Editorial Director
Forget the movie. Forget Demi Moore. Forget the nudity. Carl Hiaasen’s “Strip Tease,” written three years before Moore made headlines for accepting $12 million for the starring role, is a dark, witty political satire with one main message at its core: politics is a dirty business, but, then again, so is everything else.
Starting with a violent brawl at the “The Eager Beaver,” an appropriately named Miami strip club, the novel grabs the reader from the beginning and pulls him into the seedy world of skin clubs
and the even seedier world of political deals.
The plot concerns Erin Grant, a secretary-turned-stripper who seems to attract the unwanted attentions of the wrong kind of men, particularly Congressman David Lane Dilbeck, a sleazy, borderline insane politician who is as greasy as the Vaseline he oils his body with.
In order to work his way into Grant’s heart and bed, Dilbeck devises an elaborate scheme to win back custody of her 7-year-old daughter Angela, currently in the care of Grant’s ex-husband Darrell, a full-time wheelchair salesman and part-time drug pusher who is not above using his daughter as an unwitting accomplice to his various crimes.
Dilbeck’s misguided scheme results in a complicated, but never confusing, web of murder, theft, deception and creamed-corn wrestling that would make for an extremely dark and morbid novel without Hiaasen’s trademark wit.
Hiaasen, also the author of “Native Tongue” and “Tourist Season,” has a gift for populating his plots with colorful, realistic characters and good doses of dark humor, and “Strip Tease” is no exception.
This is a novel where nothing is quite the way it seems, including the characters. There’s a ex-con bouncer with a heart of gold, a club owner who boasts of fake mafia ties, and a stripper naive enough to believe that half her clients are celebrities seeking anonymity.
Central to this jumble is Grant, who stumbled upon stripping as a way to pay her astronomical lawyer’s fees. She is tough, with the ability to survive in the sleazy world of strip clubs, but Hiaasen has also injected his main character with a touch of humanity that makes her seem very real and sympathetic. He also resists the urge to glamorize her profession, offering a very gritty, very real view of her life.
Hiaasen also has the ability to look beyond his gender when crafting a character. He conveys an accurate image of the humiliation and frustration Grant feels when she is harassed by Dilbeck and her customers. In many ways, “The Eager Beaver” is an exaggeration of the cat calls and leers that many women endure in daily life.
This is not to say that the novel is without humor, even though the reader may have to dodge crime and mayhem to find the laughs, which provided mostly by one-liners and side plots.
Even the setting adds a half-humorous tone to the novel. There are plenty of oddities to be found in the sleazy “Eager Beaver” and in its main rival, “The Flesh Farm.” Descriptions of snake dancing and spaghetti wrestling give the club as much personality as its inhabitants. “The Eager Beaver” may not possess the ideal working conditions, but Hiaasen makes it an interesting place to visit.
The laughs, however, never distract from the purpose of the plot. Hiaasen has woven a story in which every word brings the reader closer to the characters, their lives and their many problems.
“Strip Tease” is a witty, gritty, original novel that will keep the reader laughing, wincing and wondering what will happen next. This fictional world of sex and politics is not for the faint of heart, but those who dare to turn the first page won’t stop reading until the final word.
