MIAMI PURITY

MIAMI PURITY Vicki Hendricks (Pantheon, $20) Here's a sizzling summer thriller guaranteed to scorch your beach bag. Hendricks' X-rated debut about a peppermint schnapps-swilling stripper who vows to clean up her life after accidentally killing her old man is a campy blend of over-the-top sex and violence, rendered in perfect-pitch redneckese. When Sherri Parlay lands a respectable job as a presser at Miami-Purity Dry Cleaners, she thinks her life is finally out of the bars and into the daylight. But her sleazy past was small stuff compared with what's going on between Sherri's new boss, Brenda Mahoney, and Brenda's son Payne. The plot -- packed with incest, murder, and kinky activities that involve a hot iron, a friendly dog, and a .44 Magnum -- is pure pulp, and not always well-executed. Self-destructive Sherri is the real attraction. As a white-trash femme fatale, she is a minor masterpiece. B+