Strip Tease is a novel by Carl Hiaasen. Like most of his other novels, it is a crime novel set in Florida and features Hiaasen's characteristic black humor. The novel focuses on a single mother who has turned to exotic dancing to earn enough money to gain legal custody of her young daughter, and ends up matching wits with a lecherous United States Congressman and his powerful corporate backers.
Like many Hiaasen novels, the book's plot is set against a backdrop of a particular environmental crime or corruption issue that angers the author. In this case, it is the plutocracy of sugar growers in Florida, and the exorbitant subsidies regularly granted to them by the U. Strip Tease was a New York Times bestseller in During a late-night bachelor party at the Eager Beaver, a strip club in Fort Lauderdale , Florida , drunken groom-to-be Paul Guber climbs on stage and grabs Erin Grant, one of the dancers.
Before the club's bouncer can act, Paul is attacked with a champagne bottle by another customer. The attacker turns out to be Congressman David Lane Dilbeck, an incorrigible yet secret patron of adult establishments. Political fixer Malcolm Moldowsky, representing Dilbeck's legislative patrons in Florida's sugar cane industry, is furious at Dilbeck's stupidity since he is in the middle of a tough re-election campaign.
Erin, a single mother engaged in a custody fight with her ex-husband Darrell, was fired from her job as a secretary for the FBI after he was arrested for grand larceny. The legal costs of her divorce impelled a desperate Erin to take up exotic dancing as a career. Ironically, Erin's new occupation has given the judge a prejudiced view of her, while Darrell's criminal record has been expunged due to his work as an informant for the police.
As a result, Darrell has been given custody of their daughter Angela, and Erin desperately needs even more money to reverse the court decision. One of Erin's lovestruck fans, a bookish man named Jerry Killian, recognizes Dilbeck from the club and tries to blackmail him into influencing the judge in Erin's favor. But when the judge proves resistant to Dilbeck's probing, Moldowsky arranges for Jerry's murder so as to avoid attracting any more negative attention to his client.
