In the context of the novel, it’s a throwaway line, but worth quoting because it so perfectly sums up Carl Hiaasen’s image of South Florida, a place where anything goes and nobody blinks. Hiaasen has been embellishing this image of a wayward paradise over the course of five suspense novels, beginning with “Tourist Season” (1986) and culminating with “Strip Tease.” With a one-two punch of outrage and savage humor, he has eviscerated everything from theme parks to shady plastic surgeons. The collective result is a mordantly funny portrait of an ethical swampland.
In “Strip Tease,” one of his best efforts, Hiassen tackles sleazy strip joints and the even sleazier sugar-cane industry. The books star attraction is Erin Grant, an exotic dancer with a heart of gold out to retrieve her 4-year-old daughter from the court-appointed clutches of her ex, the aforementioned Darrell. Darrell is a vicious crook who deals in wheelchairs stolen from rest homes and hospitals. Erin is also busy fending off a sex-addled congressman whose idea of public service begins and ends with protecting big sugar interests. Stir in a blackmail scheme and an ambulance-chasing shyster and the body count starts to climb.
The denizens of the Eager Beaver lounge, with names like Urbana Sprawl and Monique Sr. and Monique Jr., provide Hiaasen with most of his comic touches. He has a fine nose for nuance (one stripper’s hair smells like “Marlboros and mousse”) and a keen appreciation for misguided ingenuity: when the dancers complain to their boss, Mr. Orly, that creamed-corn wrestling lacks class, Mr. Orly suggests substituting pasta for the corn. “What’s classier than pasta?”
Hiaasen saves his sharpest seem for the sugar-cane industry magnates whom he accuses of blithely polluting the Everglades and grossly underpaying their migrant laborers, all the while hiding behind protective tariffs approved by an unwitting, if not downright corrupt, Congress.
Well told and intricately plotted, “Strip Tease” is unique: an expose in the guise of comic fiction. The author educates his readers with one little factual jolt after another, as when he mentions that no less than 75,000 Floridians are licensed to carry concealed weapons. Sharp but never slick, humane but never sentimental, Hiaasen is fast emerging as our most nimble satirist. If he doesn’t make his fortune with this novel, the world will be an even more cruel and benighted place than he claims.
