Book Description
Dave Barry makes his fiction debut with a ferociously
funny novel of love and mayhem in south Florida.
In his career, Dave Barry has done just about
everything--written bestselling nonfiction, won a Pulitzer
Prize, seen his life turned into a television series. And
now, at last, he has joined the long list of literary figures
from Jane Austen to Tolstoy who have made the transition from
humor columnist to novelist...and done it with a style and
inventiveness that establishes that, yes, he is very good at
that, too.
In the city of Coconut Grove, Florida, these things happen: A
struggling adman named Eliot Arnold drives home from a
meeting with the Client From Hell. His teenage son, Matt,
fills a Squirtmaster 9000 for his turn at a high school game
called Killer. Matt's intended victim, Jenny Herk, sits down
in front of the TV with her mom for what she hopes will be a
peaceful evening for once. Jenny's alcoholic and secretly
embezzling stepfather, Arthur, emerges from the maid's room,
angry at being rebuffed. Henry and Leonard, two hit men from
New Jersey, pull up to the Herks' house for a real game of
Killer, Arthur's embezzlement apparently not having been
quite so secret to his employers after all. And a homeless
man named Puggy settles down for the night in a treehouse
just inside the Herks' yard.
In a few minutes, a chain of events that will change the
lives of each and every one of them will begin, and will
leave some of them wiser, some of them deader, and some of
them definitely looking for a new line of work. With a wicked
wit, razor-sharp observations, rich characters, and a plot
with more twists than the Inland Waterway, Dave Barry makes
his debut a complete and utter triumph.
"The funniest book I've read in fifty
years."--Elmore Leonard
"Despite wealth, fame and a tendency to undermedicate
himself, Dave Barry remains one of the funniest writers
alive. Big Trouble is outrageously warped, cheerfully
depraved--and harrowingly close to true life in Florida. This
book will do for our tourism industry what Dennis Rodman did
for bridal wear."--Carl Hiaasen
