Rating: 
Summary: Hiaasen hilarity
Review: I've read all of Carl Hiaasen's books, and although my favorites are "Native Tongue" and "Skin Tight", I choose to review "Strip Tease" because the film did not represent it very well. In all fairness to Demi and company, I don't think Hollywood could ever do Hiaasen's dark humor justice. By now everyone knows the plot line of "Strip Tease": Erin the reluctant stripper becomes involved with smarmy politicians, environmental despoilers, and slimeball ex and inlaws in her struggle for custody of her daughter. Sexploitation, murder, and blackmail ensue, but with the help of a good-hearted Cuban cop and a deranged but devoted doorman, our protagonist prevails. As in all Hiaasen's tales, the climax is upbeat for the heroes while the villains reap their twisted, greatly-deserved kharma. For those not already familiar with Hiaasen, reading this book is a good way to begin the experience. The characters are a little less wacky, the plot a little less zany than his other novels'. But the writing style is every bit as riotous. Warning: Hiaasen is addictive! Like tattoos and chocolate-cordial cherries, you can't stop with just one. And after the insanity of the recent Elian' Gonzales tug-of-war and the rigged election, the reader will realize where Hiaasen dredges up the loony characters who populate his Florida settings. But his genuine love for his home state -- along with his genuine frustration over the rape of its ecosystem -- is evident in all his writings. Those who appreciate Hiaasen's crusade against Florida's political corruption and development & tourism industries will enjoy reading his fine little non-fiction rant, "Team Rodent: How Disney Devours the World".
Rating: 
Summary: Laugh Out Loud Caper
Review: Incompetent, corrupt, lascivious, possibly insane -- adjectives fail to conjure David Dilbeck, a Florida congressman who sometimes likes to grease himself from head to toe with Vaseline and dress up in cowboy gear. Out of costume one evening, the deranged Dilbeck comes to the defense of a Fort Lauderdale stripper, jumps onstage to throttle one of the joint's customers. Before long the congressman is the subject of a blackmail plot. Hiaasen, who in his previous novels Tourist Season and Native Tongue applied his vicious wit to those who contaminate the natural beauty of his state, here pounces on politicians. Dilbeck owes his job to the sugar industry, but thanks to his little weakness (''I should never be around naked women''), he also retains a swarm of political fixers -- most notably, Malcolm B. (Moldy) Moldowsky, who keeps a portrait of the ''severely maligned'' former Attorney General John Mitchell in his front hall. Hiaasen's unlikely heroes include stripper Erin Grant, who is desperate to wrest custody of her daughter from her ex-con ex-husband, and a bald, lumbering bouncer named Shad. (When not protecting the dancers at the Eager Beaver bar, Shad imbeds roaches in containers of yogurt -- always hoping for that one big lawsuit score.) Joining detective Al Garcia, a guy who just wants to finish one fishing trip without catching a corpse, the two manage to bring down Dilbeck's monied network. Rough, raucous and filled with lovable losers, Strip Tease is a caper novel for readers not afraid to laugh out loud.
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: 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: A darkly hilarious novel not to be missed.
Review: The movie might have, well, stunk, but 'Striptease' is a relentlessly entertaining novel full of deftly comic characterizations, hilariously absurd plot complications,
and brilliant dialogue that is at once uproariously funny and convincingly colorful. Hiaasen writes like Elmore Leonard blessed with the comic eye of S.J. Perelman, and 'Striptease' is his
finest novel to date in a career full of gems. By page fifty you'll be hooked; by page two hundred you'll be amazed by Hiaasen's ability to keep his slam-bang plot moving at a breakneck pace without
ever letting his eye for comic detail lapse.
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.
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.
Rating:
Summary: Humorous nudity - Catch the fever
Review: The thing about a Carl Hiaasen novel is that you laugh your head off. This book, well maybe Native Tongue and Skin Tight to a greater extent, will get the elderly out of your row of seats in the airport gate area and mothers herding their children protecting them from the lunatic laughing a few seats away. Because Hiaasen is that funny. You have a little of that with Brian Haig and more of it with Elmore Leonard. But Hiaasen makes you guffaw, wheeze and eventually wipe the tears from your eyes. That these people are fantasy people is no more apparent than the educated Erin Grant showing more than her heart to make ends meet. But that's OK because the circumstances, albeit ridiculous, call for it. Not much to talk about in plot. There is a strong message about the 'agent oranging' of the Florida environment. And it's not an insignificant message. But the real aspect of the book and unless I'm mistaken all of the books is their ribald humor and ability to make you laugh. 4 stars. Larry Scantlebury
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