House Rules

By WALTER SHAPIRO

TITLE: STRIP TEASE

AUTHOR: CARL HIAASEN

PUBLISHER: KNOPF; 354 PAGES; $21

THE BOTTOM LINE: Florida's answer to Donald E. Westlake directs an enjoyable, campy romp through fleshpots and folly.

Here is a surefire quiz to discover whether Strip Tease -- or any of the four earlier Florida caper novels by Miami Herald columnist Carl Hiaasen -- belongs on your nightstand. If you find these characters funny, then Hiaasen is for you:

1) A South Florida Congressman named Dave Dilbeck, who poses as a pious church deacon but whose spiritual urges send him on pilgrimages to bottomless, table-dancing strip bars. When told that he almost killed a man with a champagne bottle, a contrite Dilbeck asks, "Democrat or Republican?"

2) Malcolm J. Moldowsky -- a political fixer and Dilbeck's bagman from the sugar lobby -- who worships the sainted memory of John Mitchell. "A dear friend and mentor," says Moldowsky of the former Attorney General and Watergate conspirator. "Savagely maligned."

3) Strippers with hearts of gold, like Urbana Sprawl, who compares her profession to wing walking: "You're fine, long as you don't look down." And Monique Jr., who assures a nervous dancer, "It's a slumber party, hon. That's how come we're in our nighties."

The bare-bones plot of Strip Tease revolves around FBI secretary turned exotic dancer Erin Grant, who is working at the Eager Beaver to pay her legal fees to win back custody of her daughter. Erin's ex-husband Darrell is a lowlife so inept that he boosts wheelchairs, not cars, for a living. Congressman Dilbeck (the poor man's Wilbur Mills) becomes as obsessed with Erin as the sugar lobby is with keeping this drunken buffoon of a subcommittee chairman in office. Throw in a few dead bodies, and Hiaasen's morality play is off and running like a frisky Congressman on a bender.

Erin comes across as too earnest, too demure and too tragically trapped to belong in a caper novel. But still you want to laugh and cheer when the plucky stripper finally gets the upper hand against Dilbeck: "Davey, I'm trying to cut you a break. Now if you'd prefer Plan B, that's fine. Have you ever been on Hard Copy?" If Hiaasen dialogue like that isn't worth the price of admission, then spend your late nights curled up with Proust.