The Rojo brothers who own the largest sugar operation in South Florida have Dilbeck in their pocket and want to make sure he gets re-elected and keeps getting them their subsidy. Congressman Dilbeck has a problem: he LOVES NAKED WOMEN but he goes crazy when he's around them.ĭilbeck is chairman of the committee in the House of Representatives which oversees Federal farm subsidies for sugar farmers. Congressman David Dilbeck comes in the club and breaks a champagne bottle over another customer’s head. Everything goes fine until one night when U.S. Erin, who is desperate to get money to pay her expensive lawyer fees, becomes a stripper because she can make more in a night than she would make in a week at an ordinary job. Erin works as a secretary at the local FBI office until she is fired for being married to a man with a criminal record.ĭarrell, who is an informant for the local police, is able to get his criminal record expunged and fights Erin for custody of their small daughter. Darrell goes around stealing wheelchairs from hospitals and nursing homes and then selling them back to other hospitals and nursing homes. Erin’s ex-husband, Darrell, is a petty thief who is a professional wheel chair thief. There are entire chapters of the book in which the characters played by Demi Moore and Burt Reynolds do not appear.

The movie would have been much better with a group of unknowns and B-actors rather than a couple of stars. One of the reasons that this doesn’t work as a movie is that this book really has no stars. Striptease (1993) is Hiassen’s commentary on the exploitative practices of big commercial sugar growers.Īt the outset, let me say that Striptease is a much better novel than the awful movie with Demi Moore and Burt Reynolds.

(In Hiaasen’s first novel, Tourist Season, which I am in the process of reading now, the plot involves “environmental terrorists” who are killing tourists). Hiaasen is an environmentalist who laments the passing of pristine old Florida and the coming of tourists and developments. I know, this is perfect reading for the penitential season of Advent.įlorida author Carl Hiaasen is a columnist for the Miami Herald. So I read a tawdry comic novel about SEX. I thought that my loyal readers, all four of you, might be tired of Graham Greene and Evelyn Waugh by now.

Strip tease de carl hiaasen