Rating: 
Summary: delightful romp into South Florida excess...
Review: 'Strip Tease' by Carl Hiaasen might be better known through the rather horrendous Demi Moore film 'Striptease', which is a shame. It was because of its relationship to the film that I avoided reading anything from Hiaasen. But the reviews in amazon.com were so overwhelmingly positive I decided to take the gamble. And boy, am I glad I did. 'Strip Tease' is a delight.'Strip Tease' is a somewhat farcical story of a stripper with a heart, doing her dirty business only to put bread on the table and pay back debts related to a (losing) custody battle with her hoodlum ex-husband over their daughter. Our stripper heroine has the most wacky friends and associates, and is caught up into a political murder/sex scandal involving a rather perverted congressman. Surprising, the story holds together well despite sounding much like a cheap made-for-TV film script. However it is Hiaasen's well-timed one-liners and satiric/sarcastic wit which really makes 'Strip Tease' shine; this book is seriously funny. Bottom line: South Florida at its worst, and its funniest. Hiaasen puts together a comedic mystery with a nasty bite. Recommended.
Rating: 
Summary: Savage Satire of Lust, Bad Taste in Men and Crooked Politics
Review: Anyone who has ever traveled to south Florida has probably noticed an abundance of establishments offering entertainment by nude or partially unclothed women. Carl Hiaasen takes the establishment of the strip club as the center for his hilarious look at the ways that men and women manipulate each other, and how politicians get away with murder.
Although Mr. Hiaasen notes that the story is all fictional, he does remind the readers that the accounts of topless creamed corn wrestling are based on fact.
The central puzzle behind this book's story is how an intelligent, hard-working staff member of the FBI ends up as an exotic dancer in a strip club. That's a tale that will unfold in all its gory detail as you laugh your way through this hilarious book.
As the book opens, a bachelor party on the eve of the wedding goes horribly wrong. As the groom clutches onto the unclothed Erin Grant at the Eager Beaver, a wild man jumps onto the stage and begins belting the groom over the head with a champagne bottle. In the ensuing mess, the wild man escapes. As his car speeds away, it turns out that the attacker doesn't even know what he did . . . and doesn't want to know. Since the attacker is local Congressman David Lane Dilbeck, it looks like he'll need a political fixer to help him out. But some things cannot be fixed as easily as others. And the trail of deception heads off in a totally unexpected and deadly course.
The targets for satire are mostly among the patrons, managers and bouncers of the strip clubs as well as those who try to help them take advantage of others. But there's also a very mixed up husband who you will never forget.
This book could have easily slid into a sort of quasi-pornography but Mr. Hiaasen rigorously steers away from any tendency in that direction. Instead, the story is relatively chaste considering its subject matter.
I love books with memorable, well developed characters. Strip Tease has several. Erin Grant is one of the most original and inventive heroines that you will ever read about. Her husband is one of the funniest criminal incarnations you can imagine -- a unique portrayal of stupidity in action. Her friend Shad is a highly nuanced man of muscle and intent to protect, with a very hard head. As usual, Mr. Hiaasen's best comic genius is for those we would normally not come close to in real life . . . but who act as best they can according to a code of honor.
The best character though is Al Garcia, a policeman whose family vacation is interrupted by his children finding a floater from south Florida in Montana. Without jurisdiction, he finds a way to solve the murder and right the wrongs . . . as best he can. The whole family gets into the action before the story is over. It's a nice counterpoint to all the sleazy people in the story.
Although it will seem obvious where the story is probably going, Mr. Hiaasen is so inventive with his detailed plot development that you will find yourself racing through the book wondering what in the world he will offer next. The results are constantly surprising, entertaining and enormously funny.
Superb job, Mr. Hiaasen!
Rating:
Summary: Bring it on!!
Review: I enjoyed the book more than the movie. But then, I only watched the movie because of having read the book. I enjoyed the entertaining plot and storyline. I thought think the book was written to make a deep political statement or draw a non-fiction audience-All The President's Men, it as not. But if you want to read something that will give you a couple of chuckles, while sitting up late chomping on popcorn, something that will make you shake your head, and say..."I bet this writer knows something about this kinds of stuff", then this book is for you.
Rating:
Summary: My initiation to Carl Hiaasen
Review: I noticed no one has written a review of this. It must be because of the [poor] movie made from it. But, do not resist! Everything that has made Hiaasen is in Striptease. Wacky and eccectric characters pervade a poor working stripper's life as she tries to raise her kid. This was my first read of his many years ago. I have since reread it more than once since then, and it still cracks me up. Striptease stands up to other Hiassen classics.
Rating: 
Summary: Very disappointing after skinny dip
Review: I ordered this book as the reviews said it was funny. I found Skinny Dip so funny that at times I could not see thru tears of laughter. But I am 3/4 thru Strip Tease and have yet to laugh.
The characters are so strange they are off-putting so I'm not going to finish the book.
Rating:
Summary: Excellent book!
Review: I read this just as a lark, but I was drawn into it more then any book I have read this year. The character of Erin Grant is one of the strongest I've seen. She's gone through hell and back, and will do anything to get custody of her child. Hiaasen paints a hilarious picture of the other characters to make sure that the book doesn't get bogged down into a "Poor Little Me" vibe, which admittidly could have happened. I would definitely recommend this, even if you've been put off because of the Demi Moore movie.
Rating:
Summary: When a man gets fun, maybe a woman doesn't
Review: Many people go to Las Vegas or Atlantic city or any place like that to see topless women in a show, bar, etc. but they, or maybe we, never think what does this ladies think of their job, of course I think that the 10% of these ladies do their job because they like it and the other 90 because they have.
In this book you see how these ladies think and how nobody help them because everything is in name of the customers.
In the book you can also see the political corruption and the power that a person of the government can use just to justify himself.
The book is well written and keeps you reading all the time, it never goes out of the story and the less you read is sex, you will not need much time to finish it.
Rating:
Summary: About the right balance . . .
Review: of "stripping" and "teasing" if by stripping you mean sex and violence and "teasing" you mean satire and Mr. Hiaasen's legendary caustic political wit. (If Congress ever takes meaningful action to reduce or eliminate the federal "giveaway" sugar price-support subsidies to the big growers, the best-informed average citizens outside of the Sunshine State will undoubtedly be Hiaasen fans who read this book.) But Mr. H. says that the Latino-American sugar barons portrayed in this book are just a figment of his warped imagination. Well, his imagination may be warped, but it tickles me. This just may be Hiaasen's very best novel. The pacing is nice and zippy. Its story line has all the elements in the right degree: I mentioned the humor and the savagery, and the characters are priceless, including a bouncer who "has a high threshold" and inhales cigar smoke when he lights up, thinking that everyone else does. To an unusual degree with this frequently cynical author, the guilty suffer and the good are rewarded, though sometimes in unorthodox ways. I do agree with earlier critics who found the lady stripper a bit too good to be true. If you can spell, turn on a computer and look good in pumps, a legal secretary earns just as much money, has the drop on the best day-care centers and is about eleventy-seven times more likely to get home in one piece. I just have to forgive Hiaasen his title character's chosen profession; as the folks in the English departments do, write it off as a "convention of the genre," which is academese for "make believe it's so or else there ain't no story." This is an excellent starter book for neophyte Hiaasen fans (notice I assume that anyone who picks up his books will become a fan); though if you prefer to work up the pace slowly you might consider the earlier, more leisurely "Double Whammy."
Rating:
Summary: Another Hiaasen Masterpiece
Review: Strip Tease is one of Hiaasen's best novels and of his earlier books, definitely the best. Like with all of Hiaasen's masterpieces, Strip Tease has simultaneous stories occurring where all characters cross paths at some time. You've got your unethical lawyers, corrupt and stupid politicians and their criminal advisors/minders. Sleazy strip club owners, a floor manager named Shad who doesn't mind insurance fraud but would die to protect his work colleague strippers. Then there's Erin Grant, a stripper who is just trying to make enough money to gain legal custody of her daughter whose violent ex husband steals wheel chairs and wants to punish her by keeping custody of Angela at all costs. Detective Garcia who also appears in the novel Double Whammy along with all these great characters make for one of the best Hiaasen novels ever written, taking the reader on a ride of murder, blackmail and behind the scenes strip club and corrupt puppet politics.
Buy Strip Tease and if you loved this also get the other masterpieces, Sick Puppy, Hoot, Lucky You and Stormy Weather. Any Hiaasen novel in fact is a great read and a worthwhile purchase.
Rating:
Summary: Read the book before you see the movie
Review: 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.
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