by Dave Barry
Barry writes another wacky caper that is set in South Florida.
Reviewed by: Michael J. Griffin
About Michael J. Griffin
Dave Barry used to take a crack at writing fiction in some of his columns, where he would mimic authors like John Grisham and Danielle Steele, with hilarious results. Then apparently, a novel took seed into his own brain, and the end result was "Big Trouble", a novel that mixed Barry's humor with a plot that was part Carl Hiaasen and part Elmore Leonard.
"Big Trouble" did well on the bestseller charts and it was made into a movie. It didn't do very well in the theater, since it was due to be released the week of 9-11, and after all of the chaos of that week had subsided, the movie executives didn't want a movie that had a bomb as part of its central plot in the theaters at the time. It was released under a very low-key marketing campaign early in 2002, and ultimately faded out of the theaters quickly.
Buoyed by his success, Barry wrote another novel, "Tricky Business" and while I thoroughly enjoyed it, as I do all of Barry's work, this one is hard to figure out if Barry wanted to write a straight out thriller or a comedy novel.
There have been few books that have had me saying to myself, "Man, that character is a SICK puppy," to laughing nearly to tears on the next page.
"Tricky Business" is centered around a traveling casino boat that rides out of Miami every day. Thing is, this boat isn't legitimate, usually being used to also smuggle drugs, and today is supposed to be a drug-run day. It's also a day that a hurricane is battering the FL coast. Barry assembles the usual cast of wacky characters, ranging from a band whose members are all pot-addled to two retirees who keep sneaking out of their nursing home to go and gamble on this boat to a beautiful single-mother cocktail waitress who may or may not be what she says she is.
"Tricky Business" is darker than "Big Trouble", but Barry still has a lot of promise in his fiction career. I just hope he doesn't give up his humor columns as well.
Click here to buy this book, or read more about it at Amazon.com: Tricky Business
Copyright © by Michael J. Griffin, 2002
Reviewed by Michael J. Griffin:
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