Big Trouble. [Hardcover]

Dave Barry (Author)

Product Details

• Hardcover
• Publisher: Eichborn (February 1, 2001)
• Language: German
• ISBN-10: 3821830824
• ISBN-13: 978-3821830827
• Product Dimensions: 9.2 x 5.7 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (5 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,435,888 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Miami's slyest booster (sort of), October 14, 2004

By 

Michael K. Smith (South Louisiana) - See all my reviews
(TOP 500 REVIEWER)   

This review is from: Big Trouble. (Hardcover)

As the many readers of his column know, Dave Barry has a sideways sort of sense of humor. And, as much as he loves Miami, he's certainly not blind to the failings of his home town, where gun-ownership is a given. His first novel is part Marx Brothers, part Carl Hiaasen, part Goofy-on-dope, all set in the Miami suburb of Coconut Grove. Eliot Arnold is an ex-newsman struggling to make it with his small advertising agency, while his teenaged son, Matt, plays "Killer" with squirt guns. Matt's intended victim, Jenny, is the daughter of Arthur Herk, vice-president and bag man for a thoroughly corrupt and murderous local corporation, whose days may be numbered as a result of his not-bright embezzling. And there's Puggy, a street person living in a tree in the Herk's walled yard, who has a thing for their illegal maid, Nina. Puggy also works (sort of) for two Russian ex-army chislers who own a run-down bar as a front for their arms-dealing operation. And there's Snake and Eddie, small-time grifters who decide to make a big score -- bigger than they know, unfortunately. And there's FBI agents and assorted cops and several overlapping love stories and a very suspicious metal suitcase. (Now I've gotta see the movie!)

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars And no trouble at all except to put down before you finish, December 7, 2003

By 

Jack Purcell (Placitas, NM USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Big Trouble. (Hardcover)

If the Marx brothers could have teamed up with the Keystone Cops in a 21st Century cops and robbers episode in print they might have picked Big Trouble as a nice fit. Puggy, a benign version of the modern `street person' phenomenon, drifts to Miami to find himself at home living in a tree over the fence separating the family a wealthy low-level gangster from the world of consequences. He stumbles into a job in a run-down bar owned by two ex-Russian gunrunners dealing in stolen Soviet arms, and so begins one of the funnier dead-serious books I've read this century. A kid in a squirt-gun assassin game tangled into the activities of real-live hit-men, a man-woman Miami's finest cop team tightroping it between battles of the sexes and societal chaos all combine to make this a readable, laughable, believable book you might even put aside to read again a year from now..

2.0 out of 5 stars Get Shorty Warmed Over?, April 12, 2010

By 

Norman R. Bishop "Rand Bishop, author, Makin'... (Nashville, TN) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Big Trouble. (Hardcover)

Carrying on in the tradition of Irma Bomback and Art Buchwald, Dave Berry certainly qualifies as one of the great American humorists of our time. His newspaper column has a unique cadence that allows the reader to easily imagine the writer's voice brilliantly describing the mundane and ironic challenges of marriage, parenthood, and citizenship.

In Big Trouble, however, that distinct voice seems muted. What remains is a generic, paint-by-numbers aping of Get Shorty, a formulaic caper comedy peopled with cliché-spouting stereotypes. The book reads exactly like the kind of movie you might pick up at Blockbuster when all the latest titles are checked out. And, to be sure, that's exactly the kind of movie Big Trouble turned out to be: an unsurprising, mildly amusing piece of fluff.

I'm a huge Dave Berry fan. His essays on contemporary family life and observations on our loopy culture are dazzlingly side-splitting. Fiction, I'm afraid, seems (at least in the case of Big Trouble) to be more than a bit outside Berry's wheelhouse. A swiiiiing... and a miss.

Rand Bishop, author of Makin' Stuff Up, The Absolute Essentials of Songwriting Success, and the novel/mock memoir, Grand Pop.