The Thumbnail Book Reviews
by John Q McDonald --- 12 March 2009
by Carl Hiaasen
There are archetypes in the subgenres modern American literature that depict the seedier sides of our culture. The stripper with the heart of gold. Corrupt government officials. The thuggish bouncer with a gentle side. The seedy fixer. The toadies and hangers-on. It's an easy bunch for the reader to fell superior to. This makes their various fates and comeuppances a fairly satisfying frame on which to hang a plot. Carl Hiaasen makes a specialty of depicting the corrupt and ugly underside of South Florida politics and culture and does so with particular unseemliness in Strip Tease (not to be confused with Striptease, the Demi Moore movie that was, after all, a poorly-received adaptation of this novel). The stripper with the heart of gold is Erin Grant, who, in dire need of cash to pay her lawyer in an ugly child custody case with her jerk of an ex-husband, has become a "dancer" at the Eager Beaver, a strip club somehwere in Broward County. She has class, though, to the club's owner, Orly, and the bouncer (with a gentle side) Shad. She dances to tunes by Van Morrison and James Taylor, while the other girls bump and grind to hip-hop and rap. The book opens, though, as a disguised congressman, David Dilbeck, beats in the skull of a drunken bachelor who has his arms wrapped around Erin's feet. Everything descends from there. The book is heavily-peopled with really creepy characters, blackmailers, boneheaded politicians, murderous schemers and one darling little girl, Angela, Erin's daughter. A customer offers to blackmail the congressman on Erin's behalf, and she is dearly tempted. She is not necessarily an angel, herself, when it comes to getting custody from her husband, a wheelchair thief and police informant. It would be hard to describe all of the characters and plot elements of this novel in so short a review. But, all sorts of things come into play, most especially the corruption that revolves around an upcoming vote in Congress to continue sugar crop subsidies that keep a bunch of rich people rich, a larger bunch of migrant workers poor, the Everglades polluted, and a constant flow of favors, parties and hastily covered-up debauchery. This is Hiaasen's axe to grind (as he did so in Sick Puppy). The story is about the great lengths to which people go to take advantage of other people, to hurt each other and the world in which they live. Pure selfishness. Hiaasen seems to see it all around and is duly disgusted with these people. The book is long enough that it becomes increasingly difficult for the reader to endure this parade at the bottom of American culture. But, Hiaasen describes these people, and their deeds, with such evident relish that it is hard to put the book down. It is funny and disturbing at the same time. Within a few pages, the reader is already looking forward to these characters getting what they deserve more than three hundred pages later. Hiaasen delivers with over-the-top and emimently satisfying punishments for the greedy, corrupt and violent. The promise is that Erin will get her girl and the husband will get his just reward (along with the congressman, bouncer, the fixer and the pair of Japanese guys running the strip joint down the street from the Eager Beaver). It's a long, satisfying funny, disturbing, profane, creepy and ornate read.
Also by Hiaasen: [Sick Puppy]