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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

One of Paul's friends from the bachelor party inadvertently snapped a picture of Dilbeck during the attack; Mordecai uses it to demand hush money.

Dilbeck believes the dance is a prelude to "wild cowboy sex," but when he realizes it is not, he tries to rape Erin–at which point he is seized by a squad of FBI agents, led by Erin's old boss, who received an anonymous call saying she had been abducted.

In the epilogue, it is revealed that she has got back her old job as well as a side-hustle dancing in the Main Street Parade at Walt Disney World and is currently applying to become an FBI agent herself.

[1]In 1996, it was adapted to the screen, under the title Striptease, written and directed by Andrew Bergman, and starring Demi Moore as Erin, Burt Reynolds as Dilbeck, Ving Rhames as Shad, Armand Assante as Al Garcia, Robert Patrick as Darrell, Rumer Willis as Angela and Paul Guilfoyle as Moldowsky.