Strip Tease (novel)
First edition
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| Author | Carl Hiaasen |
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| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
| Publisher | Alfred A. Knopf |
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Publication date
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Sep 1993 |
| Media type | Print (hardback and paperback) |
| Pages | 353 |
| ISBN | |
| Preceded by | Native Tongue |
| Followed by | Stormy Weather |
Strip Tease is a 1993 novel by Carl Hiaasen. Like most of his other novels, it is a crime novel set in Florida and features Hiaasen's characteristic black humor. The novel focuses on a single mother who has turned to exotic dancing to earn enough money to gain legal custody of her young daughter, and ends up matching wits with a lecherous United States Congressman and his powerful corporate backers.
Like many Hiaasen novels, the book's plot is set against a backdrop of a particular environmental crime or corruption issue that angers the author. In this case, it is the of sugar growers in Florida, and the exorbitant subsidies regularly granted to them by the U.S. Congress.
Strip Tease was a New York Times bestseller in 1993.
During a late-night bachelor party at the Eager Beaver, a striptease club in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, the drunken groom-to-be, Paul Guber, climbs on stage and grabs one of the dancers. Before the club's bouncer can act, Guber is attacked by another customer, swinging a champagne bottle. Chaos ensues, during which the attacker disappears in a hurry, and the groom is hospitalized.
The man with the bottle was U.S. Congressman David Lane Dilbeck, an incorrigible (yet secret) patron of strip bars, nude dancers, and other forms of erotic entertainment. Dilbeck's main function in Washington, D.C. is to rubber stamp lucrative price supports for Florida's sugar cane farming industry. His "handler," political fixer Malcolm Moldowsky, is furious at the Congressman's stupidity, since Dilbeck is in the middle of his re-election campaign.
The dancer is Erin Grant, a single mother engaged in a bitter legal fight with her ex-husband, Darrell, for custody of their young daughter, Angela. Erin was fired from her job as a secretary for the Federal Bureau of Investigation after Darrell was arrested for grand larceny (his "profession" is stealing and re-selling wheelchairs). The legal costs of her divorce impelled Erin to take up erotic dancing as a career. Ironically, her occupation has given the judge a prejudiced view of her, while Darrell's criminal record has been expunged after he has agreed to become an informant for the police. As a result, Darrell has been given custody of Angela, and Erin desperately needs even more money to reverse the court decision.
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