- Paperback: 336 pages
- Publisher: Berkley (Jan 11 2002)
- Language: English
- ISBN-10: 0425184129
- ISBN-13: 978-0425184127
- Product Dimensions: 17 x 10.7 x 2.8 cm
- Shipping Weight: 181 g
- Average Customer Review: 3.9 out of 5 stars See all reviews (275 customer reviews)
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: #2,209,450 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
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Product Details |
Product Description
From Amazon
Dave Barry, the only newsman to win a Pulitzer for exemplary use of words like booger, will please humor and crime-fiction fans alike with this racy debut novel. The scene is Miami. In ritzy Coconut Grove, the teen son of Eliot, a newsman turned adman, sneaks up to spritz a cute girl with a Squirtmaster 9000 to win a high school game called Killer. Meanwhile, two hit men sneak up to kill the girl's abusive stepdad, Arthur. Arthur cheated his bosses at corrupt Penultimate, Inc., which equipped a Florida jail with automatic garage-opener gates that accidentally freed prisoners in a lightning storm.
Farcical confusion ensues, witnessed by a saintly bum named Puggy, camped in a tree in Arthur's yard. Puggy works at the Jolly Jackal Bar & Grill, which has no grill and actually sells guns and bombs to an offshoot of the Crips and Bloods called the Cruds, and to Penultimate (which plans to conquer Cuba). But when dim thugs Eddie and Snake rob the Jolly Jackal and Arthur tells them it's a Russian mob front selling bombs, the proprietor snorts, "Bombs, pfft! No bombs! Is bar."
Can Snake and Eddie spirit a suitcase nuke through Miami, "where most motorists obeyed the traffic and customs of their individual countries of origin"? Can Eliot and cop Monica Rodriguez save the day? And how do the 300-pound hallucinogenic Enemy Toad, the 13-foot-long python Daphne, highway goats, and the Denture Adventure seniors' theme park fit in? Everything fits perfectly, including a few dark passages new to Barry's work. But one warning: if you read this book while drinking milk, at some point it will spurt out of your nostrils. --Tim Appelo --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
From Publishers Weekly
In writing a comic thriller set in South Florida, the Pulitzer-winning Miami Herald columnist and author of 20 books of satirical nonfiction (most recently, Dave Barry Turns 50) risks the inevitable comparison to Carl Hiaasen. The good news is that he acquits himself well in this slapstick caper. Barry's cast of familiar South Florida oddballs populate what might best be described as a Garry Trudeau (Doonesbury) sendup of the hard-boiled crime novels of Elmore Leonard. Featuring a homeless drifter who sleeps in a tree and tends bar for two illegal arms-dealing Russian hoods, a pair of two-bit losers who hustle tourists at parking meters, an ex-journalist (now a failing ad-man), a pretty illegal alien, a boozy embezzler and his ill-used wife and daughter, a teen with a water pistol playing a game of Killer, a retarded dog, a psychedelic South American toad, two klutzy New Jersey hit men and a virtual army of local and Federal law enforcement, the novel's quirky players bounce off each other like popcorn in a microwave, chasing after a mysterious suitcase containing a nuclear bomb in an unlikely race against certain death. The zany plot has more twists than the I-95 Miami airport interchange and more pratfalls than a Three Stooges comedy. Despite an occasional stiffness and tendency to strain for one-liners, the narrative moves at a breezy pace. Barry is indisputably one of the funniest humorists writing today, and his fiction debut will not disappoint a legion of fans. Agent, Al Hart. 150,000 first printing; $150,000 ad/promo; Literary Guild featured alternate; 12-city author tour. (Sept.)
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
Inside This Book
(Learn More)
First Sentence
Puggy had held down his job at the Jolly Jackal Bar and Grill, which did not have a grill, for almost three weeks. Read the first page Browse Sample Pages
Front Cover | Copyright | Excerpt | Back Cover
Puggy had held down his job at the Jolly Jackal Bar and Grill, which did not have a grill, for almost three weeks. Read the first page Browse Sample Pages
Front Cover | Copyright | Excerpt | Back Cover
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Most helpful customer reviews
3.0 out of 5 stars
Okay, but what I hoped from Dave,
By A Customer
This review is from: Big Trouble (Mass Market Paperback)
Background: grew up in South Florida reading and loving Dave in the Miami Herald but I live many states away now. I found out after reading the book that it was made into a movie starring Tim Allen. I'm sort of a movie buff but still had never heard of the movie and to date I've never seen it.Pretty good book, but not what I had hoped from Dave Barry. I guess this was his first foray into a full novel. The frog is the best part and it is pretty much what one would expect from a goofy, South Florida tale. It has lots of funny moments, but I really don't know if non-Dave Barry fans could enjoy it because the end story leaves alot to be desired. Nonetheless, if you get if for cheap, it's a quick read and it's funny.
4.0 out of 5 stars
warning: don't drink while reading,
By A Customer
This review is from: Big Trouble (Mass Market Paperback)
...or you'll run the risk of injury and embarrassment if you're in public. Yes, this book has some bad words and sexual situations - it's a novel not a column run in a family-friendly newspaper. And its intended audience is adults' whose books occasionally have bad words and sexual situations - regardless how many young people enjoy Dave's columns. Otherwise it would be a different section of the bookstore.Anyway, it's very funny. No one can or should be able to make the reader howl on every single page, but "Big Trouble" does a fine job of entertaining. If you've seen the movie (worth checking out) it's very loyal to the book: same characters and most of the funniest situations are kept in. Plot: Roughly eight to 12 characters wind up interacting in a kind of convoluted manner to describe well here - a pair of teens playing "Killer" with a water pistol wind up inadvertenly messing up a hit man's plan to kill the dad of one of their classmates - whose maid winds up falling in love with the narrator - a homeless man called Puggy. Meanwhile the target of the hitman winds up facedown in a bowl of dog chow squirted by a poisonous toad having hallucinations that involve Martha Stewart. Eventually, the dad of one of the teens winds up hijacking a plane - which finally wins his son's respect. A bomb which passes with impunity through an airport check is finally diffused and - well, why not read the rest? I promise it's funnier than just a brief description here can make it.
2.0 out of 5 stars
Very disappointing.,
By Kyle Howard (Wichita, KS USA) - See all my reviews
This review is from: Big Trouble (Hardcover)
May I first say that I am a fan of Barry's? I love his columns and his comedy books. I didn't like this in the least.It reaks of rookieness. The characters are so flat and predictable that you will not be able to attach to them. The plot is empty and very, very boring. And, worst of all, he seems to try and make up for it with distasteful humor. I'm no prude, but this is pretty vulgar stuff, and the payoff in humour is lacking. Barry is a great columnist, but his fiction is bottom of the barrell, please don't bother.
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