Strip Tease

I have read several of Hiaasen's books and loved them. They were very funny. This one is not. It is an endless description of naked strippers. I found the main character, Erin, to be very unappealing. She is just so stupid. Her problems are all of her own creation. And she is not funny. I think you have to be a man to like this book. I, as a woman, just found it exceedingly boring. I kept waiting for it to get funny. It never did.

I probably would have enjoyed this more had I not previously read "Native Tongue." However, the similar ironic humor, not-quite-what-they-seem characters, and convenient plot devices make the writing seem familiar. The formerly outrageous implausibility now seems too deliberate, almost scripted for a series of five-minutes scenes (and "Strip Tease" did become an awful movie), the sleazy villains and virtuous heroes are now predictably offbeat, tenacious, and plain lucky. We can forgive the manipulations on a first encounter, he's a good and clever author taking you on a gravity-defying roller coaster. But we're a little more leery with this outing, and the farcical is supplanted too often by the expedient. Again, he's such a good writer that you want to go along with him, but after a while, it's a bit too felicitous.
In "Strip Tease," the characters are, for the most part, either good people in unfortunate situations, or bad people in fortunate ones. The heroine, while appealing and feisty, is still somewhat of a cliche--the whore with a heart of gold--only she's not a whore, she's a stripper, and she's her own stripper too, refusing to do table or lap dances. And, if that weren't enough, she's doing this all to pay lawyer's fees to regain custody of her daughter. Here she is, a former FBI assistant, smarter than anyone around her, can type 70 words a minute, and only this job will pay the attorney? A job, no matter how how she limits it, that isn't likely to win many points in future custody battles. Makes for a fun novel, what with the easy target of a sleazy (but not too!) strip joint, a violent (but good-hearted) bouncer, and mostly good ole' boy customers, but not a very plausible one.
Again, this might work better in a pure farce, but the multiple murders, child endangerment, and unexplored exploitation of women works against this. The author would have us believe that the strippers really have the upper hand, but why, in the epilogue, do so many of them leave the joint for such heretofore unimagined pursuits such as law school? OK, let's just take it tongue in cheek...but after a while it begins to read like a male fantasy, with the author rescuing the women and punishing the unjust. While exposing the corruption of Florida's sugar cane industry, there's very little comment about the lurid, potentially dangerous life of a stripper. (Oh, those must be the "BAD" strippers, not the ones described here.) 3 ½ * if you've never read the author before, he's funny, ironic, and writes an exciting conclusion, but I respectfully disagree with my Amazon colleagues who rate this a 5. Ultimately, the tease is on the reader.

While not Carl Hiaasen's best work -- I'd nominate "Skin Tight" or "Native Tongue" for that -- "Strip Tease" is far wiser, funnier and richer than the anemic film version by Demi Moore would have you believe.
Instead of FBI secretary-turned-stripper Erin being a strangely desexualized perfect being, in the novel, in the novel, she's a complicated mess. In other words, a real human being. Her ex-husband is a piece of crap, yes, but not the cartoonish lout we see in the film. In fact, everyone in a Hiaasen novel is a bit of a goofball, once their foibles are looked at unflinchingly, which is part of the fun.
Those only familiar with "Strip Tease" via the movie don't get any of that: The good guys are too good to screw up, and the bad guys are too stupid to have any redeeming qualities. And to top it all off, Demi apparently doesn't understand that stripping is meant to titillate, not spiritually enlighten its audience. Those aroused by the film ought to get out more.
In fact, the book tops the film in every way, with the possible exception of what Burt Reynolds brings to the film. But even then, in his role as a corrupt politician -- and, ultimately, the engine for the story -- punches are pulled and he's not quite as sleazy as in the book. Apparently, giving people a lesson into how greed is destroying the Everglades was just too heavy for the film audience.
Those who liked the film -- and they exist, strangely enough -- still ought to pick up the book, to learn all about the characters and read the situations that didn't make the final cut. For current fans of Hiaasen's work, the book is roughly on par with "Stormy Weather," although much more politically barbed than that work, which took aim at humanity's folly generally.
And for Demi Moore, what were you thinking? You owe Carl and his fans a big apology, as well as your own fans, who deserve better.

I just finished reading Strip Tease by Carl Hiaasen. I found his writing to be typical Hiaasen which is to say it is unexpected, sarcastic and witty. In this book he tackles some of the issues that he has been known to expose in the past.

In this book his protagonist is a young woman, Erin, who loses her job at the FBI because of her husbands felonious past. She then loses her daughter when her husbands past is hidden by the very people sworn to protect her when he is 'hired' as a confidential informant.

Erin ends up turning to exotic dancing as it is the only way for her to make the money she needs to fight for her daughters' custody. I found this commentary on society, in particular our views on women's jobs and pay, to very poignant. The only way Erin can make thousands of dollars is to expose herself to the very men who are judging her to be an unfit mother.

Following the theme of previous Hiaasen novels, the antagonists are corrupt and oblivious to the harm they cause to both the environment and their constituents. The descriptions of the misconduct is both intriguing and scary.

Hiaasen continues to impress with his sarcastic and witty style. If dark humor is what you fancy, you won't be dissapointed in this outing from one of the best writers in the genre.

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.

This book is chock full of snide shots at our fearless
governmental leaders, the FBI, and the human
animal in general. It's also full of action and suspense.
Hiaasen's characters and plot twists both often
ride a fine line between realism and caricature.
It's a fast and funny read - a can't put it downer -
full of both belly laughs and snickers. Fun stuff

I have often seen Hiassen pop up in my Amazon recommendations, but I had never read any though for whatever reason. The work seemed compared to smart and literate men like that of Robbins or Moore, so Amazon kept telling me to check this guy out. I never did until just recently, when this book was part of a Humble Bundle collection that I bought.

I’m not sure Striptease may have been the best introduction to his work. I couldn’t figure out what I didn’t like about it until I was about halfway through. It is the basis of the derided Demi Moore movie of the same name. In spite of the movie coming out when I was a teenage boy and therefore being part of the prime audience, I never saw the movie (ok, maybe I saw some of the scenes). That wasn’t even the issue, though it did make me think of the book in a slightly different light. The problem is that a lot of the details are too clever by half and make the book unrealistic. For example, the main character is a stripper with a heart of gold. The only reason she dances is because she needs the money to fight for her kid. Also: The judge on the case often goes to the place where she works. The judge also is the only judge in family court history to give a child to a father who has no means of support and has several convictions but those were expunged because he works as an informant for some police officers. The father’s real means of support? He steals wheelchairs and resells them.

It’s quite ridiculous. Then add that the main driver of the plot is an over-sexed politician... never mind that part is real. Basically it reminds me of the worst ridiculousness that can be found in the books of Chuck Palahniuk. They are the same kind of details that I thought were clever and I slipped into my undergraduate fiction. I have to give Hiaasen the benefit of the doubt though. This book is 25 years old. Perhaps he got better. This book, however, is to be avoided.

After reading "Skinny Dip" I just had to go onto another of Carl Hiaasen's books. Like the previous reader, when I picked up "Strip Tease" I had no idea it was the same story as the Demi Moore movie. Never seeing the movie, I began the book and got totally involved with the storyline and the characters. What a crazy chain of events starting straight on with the very first page. The domino effect begins immediately with the aftermath of Paul Gruber's bachelor party at the strip club, the Eager Beaver. Seems Congressman David Dilbeck is quite the lady's man or at least he thinks he is and Ms. Erin Grant is the stripper of the year that he can't take his mind or his hands off of! Poor little Erin, just stripping to make money to gain custody of the daughter she lost to her drug addict ex-husband. She lost custody of her daughter because of her profession, a profession she had to go into because she lost her previous job w/the FBI as a result of her druggie, wheelchair-stealing husband. He in turn gained custody of little Angela after being busted by the police but then in turn, agreeing to becoming a snitch for them. This is just one of the scenarios of the crazy antics of this story. I thoroughly enjoyed not only the storylines but also the character development, good and bad guys alike. I found the basic premise of political as well as environmental corruption not as good as Skinny Dip, but definitely an attention-getter. I am very glad I did not see the movie because I hear from everyone who did see it that it was terrible. I would image had I seen the move first, I would have never read the book and many people would certainly feel the same way. Don't let the movie steer you away from this most enjoyable novel.

Hiaasen and Dave Barry in the same office...how did anything ever get done at the Miami Herald?

Another in a series of entertaining off beat adventures where the quasi anti-social "good guy" triumphs over an insensitive self absorbed, environmentally destructive no good-nick.

The reviews of the movie made from this book generally panned the stupidity and "unrealism" of the characters. Those who took this route were badly off-base if they didn't read the source material. For if I am ever to write about, Carl Hiaasen is going to be my inspiration.
This is a novel where beautiful women are naked for most of the story. Yet it is not an erotic tale, and those wanting to pursue it as a book you would hide in the dresser would be misguided. For this story deals with the BUSINESS of taking one's clothes off for a living. Because it's all business, it's not erotic, even though it explains the erotic attraction of the industry. But this is not to say it's still not terrific reading.
I've read several of the author's works. He has a style where practically every sentence drips with a cynicism that only slightly skewers reality. Practically every character has flaws, as we all do, but it's those flaws that become the dominant part the character, and therefore fodder for a delicious literary dissection whenever they appear in the plot. Even a "good guy", like Shad the bouncer, is a felon who is planning to scam society, and is willing to punch out anyone in his way.
The only one to escape this torment is our heroine, Erin, which I find the only slight flaw to the story. As the poor mother given the shaft by society, and "forced" to earn her living this way, she's just a little too perfect as a human. She gets away with too much just by basically demanding it, and it would have been nice to see her nailed in a comical way, also.
The story would have been great with just the story of mom having to earn her living this way, but what makes it superb is how the author injects just the right amount of social commentary into this stories. When the average person thinks of Florida, where his books are based, they often don't stray beyond Mickey the rodent. They don't think about how developers are trashing much of the fragile beauty of the state. They know about how industry is pouring tons of pollutants into the Everglades. And when they put sugar in, well, everything, they don't WANT to know the exploitation of people, the land, and entire countries that goes on to get the stuff to your table, and for letting us know this, Carl Hiaasen is my literary hero.