Strip Tease - Hardcover

Hiaasen, Carl

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0333593618 ISBN 13: 9780333593615

Publisher: MacMillan, 1993

Synopsis

2 cassettes/ 3 hours
Read by Edward Asner

Congressman David Dilbeck has a bad problem. "I should never," he says, "be around naked women."  And late one night, at a gaudy Fort Lauderdale strip joint, Dilbeck loses control. He leaps onto the stage with the performers and proceeds to demonstrate his affections in a most unconventional way. The congressman barely escapes the scene, but not before being recognized by an odd little customer known as Mr. Peepers - an unlikely blackmailer, but (it turns out) a cunning one.  From the staid corridors of Congress to the sweltering cane fields of Lake Okeechobee, from a topless wrestling pit to a sunken Guatemalan banana boat, STRIP TEASE is a maniacally inventive and suspenseful tale that resonates with the furious intelligence, merciless characterization and savage good humor that we've come to expect from Carl Hiaasen.

About this title

Review

At the Eager Beaver, a topless bar in Fort Lauderdale, former FBI clerk Erin Grant dances nightly to pay for legal fees in her custody fight for her young daughter. There David Dilbeck, a U.S. Congressman owned by the state's sugar interests is recognized by a regular who is infatuated with Erin and initiates a blackmail plan to influence her court case. The resulting mayhem, occurring in election year, involves machinations up to the highest state level, a poignant custody battle and murder.

About the Author

Carl Hiaasen (pronounced "hiya-sun") was born and raised in South Florida and presently lives in Tavernier, smack in the middle of the Florida Keys. He attended Emory University and was graduated with a degree in journalism from the University of Florida at Gainesville in 1974. Hiaasen began his journalism career writing weird public interest stories ("Garbageman for a day") at Cocoa Today (now the Melbourne-based Florida Today). He joined the Miami Herald in 1976, and since then has been a reporter for their general assignment desk, Sunday magazine and investigative team. As part of The Miami Herald's investigative team, Hiaasen has worked on projects exposing dangerous doctors in Florida, land corruption in the Florida Keys, and drug smuggling in the Bahamas and Key West. He is currently Metro columnist for the paper where his award-winning columns on rapacious development, egregious business practices, and corrupt politicians have helped clarify issues for the Florida citizenry. Carl Hiaasen turned his hand to fiction in the early eighties. His first novel, Tourist Season,was published in 1986 and named "one of the ten best destination reads of all time" by GQ Magazine. He is the author of five other best-selling novels, Double Whammy, Skin Tight, Native Tongue, Strip Tease and Stormy Weather. Louise Bernikow, writing in Cosmopolitan, calls Hiaasen's fiction "unbelievably funny -- tears-running-down-your-cheeks funny in spite of some pretty weighty themes like the destruction of the environment and the cut-throat ways of developers." Tony Hillerman calls Hiaasen "the Mark Twain of the crime novel." And Donald Westlake says "Hiaasen is so good he ought to be illegal." Hiaasen is also a songwriter, having co-wrote two songs on Warren Zevon's album. Mutineer (the two songs are Seminole Bingo and Rollweiler Blues). The film Strip Tease, based on Hiaasen's novel, directed by Andrew Bergman starring Demi Moore in pasties and Burt Reynolds in a hairpiece, was a recent major motion picture.

About this edition

• Publisher: MacMillan
• Publication date: 1993
• ISBN 10: 0333593618
• ISBN 13: 9780333593615
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 320