CARL HIASSEN – Strip Tease. Knopf, hardcover, 1993. Warner, paperback, 1994.   Film: Columbia, 1996, as Striptease (with Demi Moore, Burt Reynolds & Armand Assante).

   Hiassen has been one of those writers whose virtuosity I grant, but whose product simply hasn’t appealed to me. Several people told me that his latest was less off-the-wall than previous ones, so I decided to try it.

   We start with a Florida congressman who every now and then goes a little pussy crazy, if you’ll pardon the indelicacy. This time it takes the form of assaulting a drunk who’s pawing a nude dancer who’s an ex-FBI clerk.

   The dancer is divorced from one of the worst kind of scumbags, who nevertheless got custody of her daughter because of a bible-toting judge. Then there’s a local cop, a Cuban, who gets involved because of a body that turns up in Montana while he’s on vacation.

   Throw in a political fixer, a few sugar growers, and a sleazy lawyer or two, and you have yourself a typical Hiassen cast.

   Well, it was a little straighter than his norm, though I don’t know how much that says. Hiasson’s palette really doesn’t have any muted shades. There aren’t any weedeater prostheses, but there’s a Chinaman bitten on the penile appendage by a long snake.

   Has Florida really taken over the country’s title for most sleaze and slime, or have    the writers really just settled upon it as an easy target? There seems to be an unlimited market for low-down Florida novels, and they all seem to sell.

   While I don’t like them nearly so well as America does, if you’re going to read one Hiassen [this one] is a good choice. He has a real eye for the odd and the underside, and a biting wit. There are actually a few characters in this one that it’s possible to like, though I don’t know that I’d care to live next door to any of them.

   If you like ’em down, dirty, and strange, this is for you.