There comes a point in almost every novel by newspaper man turned novelist Carl Hiaasen where the reader begins to wonder whether anyone, least of all the author, has any control over the ever spiralling absurdities of plot. It's as though the lunatics have wrested control of the asylum and are running wild with all its attendant possibilities. That they invariably reach solid, inventive climaxes is, therefore, testament surely to something.

Strip Tease follows the usual pattern of Hiaasen novels by swiftly aligning its gallery of misfits, malcontents and grotesques. Nominally, events centre on Erin Grant, exotic dancer at the aptly titled Eager Beaver, an establishment of dubious ethics, bounced by the huge, totally-bald Shad. Her profession not being (publicly at least) morally upstanding, her young daughter lives with pill-popping ex-husband Darrell, who feeds his various habits by stealing wheelchairs. When visiting Congressman David ("I should never be around naked women") Dilbeck attacks another patron with a champagne bottle one night, all manner of possibilities for well-meaning blackmail and political fixing open up to those with eyes to see, sparking off an increasingly hysterical corkscrew of revenge, violence and murder in election year.

It's Hiaasen's boast that there's little exaggeration in his novels, plucked almost from the day's headlines, which can only fill his audience with dread for the citizens of Miami. These are weighty but high-speed novels that sizzle with - in the main - above the waist laughs. Indeed, considering much of the action unfolds in and around a strip-joint (and the heroine spends at least half her time naked) its the women who are best served here. The men on the other hand become an increasingly sad and gruesome bunch - the less than by-the-book lawyer Mordecai, with an eye to the main chance; the odious spin-doctor Malcolm Moldowsky; the sweaty would-be Mafia lackey Orly - and especially the slimy, libidinous Dilbeck, in the pay of the local sugar-millionaires, and Darrell Grant, an increasingly natural pharmaceutically-driven successor to the horse-steroid-popping Pedro Luz of the earlier Native Tongue. Of them all, only Cuban cop, Garcia, and the outsize Shad (despite seemingly starting out as a throw-back to the psychotic Chemo of Skin Tight) escape with any credibility intact.

Subtle isn't in it, but at least Hiaasen is never tempted to go for the easy laugh at the expense of the story. And where in previous books it was TV evangelism (Double Whammy), Disney-esque theme parks (Native Tongue) and plastic surgery (the marvellous, recommended Skin Tight) that got it in the neck, here he's tracking the big one - politics - through the undergrowth, beating it down with broad strokes and venomous asides. Ultimately however, Hiassen's novels have too broad a canvass to tackle the great Elmore Leonard on home-ground, and lack the consummate cruelty of the late Charles Willeford, despite the occasional exaggerated dose of violence (although nothing here can match the sheer lunacy of Native Tongue's magnificent dolphin-fuck). These are formidable, breakneck confections stuffed to overflowing with all manner of sticky, sweet excess that you know by rights you should avoid but just once in while provide a spectacular and enormously satisfying pig-out of a crime read.