STRIP TEASE

It's a wonder Florida hasn't yet banished Hiaasen (Native Tongue, etc.). Here's the Miami Herald reporter's fifth comic thriller—a marvelous madcap yarn pitting a stripper vs. a congressman—depicting the Sunshine State as the weirdest place this side of Oz. And the most venal as well: Hiaasen's satire is more barbed than ever here, pricking at Florida's apparently corrupt sugar industry. The typically bizarre action begins at Fort Lauderdale's Eager Beaver club, where a drunk fan is pawing star stripper Erin Grant. Out of the audience rushes an old gent who clubs the mauler with a bottle of Korbel. No big deal—except that the white knight is Congressman David Dilbeck, toady to sugar interests and up for reelection. Two men try to blackmail Dilbeck: one, a lovestruck fan of Erin's, wants the congressman to help reverse the judicial decision that granted custody of Erin's daughter to her psycho husband, Darrell; the other, a sleazy lawyer, wants money. Both wind up dead, victims of the sugar-growers' long and homicidal arm. Meanwhile, warfare erupts between the Eager Beaver and the rival Flesh Farm, and not even the Beaver's new attraction—patrons wrestling strippers in a vat of creamed corn—can stem the tide of customers to the Farm and it's "friction" dancing. In any case, Erin won't do corn, so—desperate for money to run away with her daughter, whom she's snatched from Darrell—she turns to dancing privately for the slobbering congressman. But now Darrell's hot on her trail, rusty knife in hand, and it takes all of Erin's wiles, plus some help from a kindly Cuban cop and the Eager Beaver's bald giant of a bouncer, to keep Darrell off her back and Dilbeck out of her pants—and bring justice to the sugar industry as well. Prime Hiaasen, and with a new edge: sexier, more violent, more political, but just as funny.