Customer Reviews

Tricky Business

5 star:		(33)
4 star:		(25)
3 star:		(17)
2 star:		(18)
1 star:		(8)

 

 

A farcical madcap romp in which literature collides with Dave Barry--in the Atlantic Ocean--and both get soaked. Other reviewers have outlined the plot. Basically a lot of people with different agendas get caught up in a midnight cruise on the Extravaganza of the Seas. Which is a more-or-less legal offshore gambling ship, as well as a strictly illegal drug-running ship.

While the characters are plotting and scheming, double-crossing each other, trying to have a little fun, or just trying to survive, the ship heads out into Hurricane Hector.

Barry tells the story with his usual comic flair, lots of bad words, his usual fascination with bodily fluids, a little adolescent sexuality, and a bottomless capacity to laugh at everything, including himself. Dave Barry is not a great novelist, knows it, doesn't take himself too seriously, and seemed to enjoy writing this book as much as I enjoyed reading it. I would have preferred a little less blood and gore, but hey! For what it was, it worked. If you're not too uptight, you will love it.

If you want to read a fun story that is an easy read and will make you laugh, pick up this book and enjoy yourself. If you are looking for serious literature with important insights on the human condition and the meaning of life, I suggest you look elsewhere.

This funny story set on a gambling boat sailing in a hurricane is quite witty and creative. Along the way Barry manages to skewer local news broadcasters, organized crime, backsliding professional musicians, senior citizens, and the primal urge to gamble.

The story itself which involves underworld drug dealing and profit skimming along with an action plot isn't all that important. It's merely there to give Barry an opportunity to make funny observations and create memorable characters.

The bottom line is that it's funny but I'm not sure I would recommend paying the full hardcover price for it. [...]

What does a giant pink conch, gas passing croupier, cocktail waitress/Coast Guard employee, horny cover band drummer and a gaggle of thugs have in common? Nothing, unless they're aboard a cruise ship in Dave Barry's "Tricky Business." Not quite as good as his first novel, "Big Trouble," but still pretty good, "Tricky," features Barry column staples: bodily function jokes, insights on the differences between the sexes - but those considering giving this book to young Barry fans, would do well to read the foreword, in which he states not one, but three times, that THIS BOOK CONTAINS SOME BAD WORDS. (Actually, more than a few.) Kudos for the warning, although those who are the most likely to get offended, probably won't read it.

Like "Big Trouble," "Tricky" has a plot hard to sum up in a few words, but involves sharply drawn "good" guys who eventually wind up in a contained space with the (far too many one syllable named) bad guys and mayhem results, along with an explanation of why women never seem to fart. Good read although I had to admit I missed Puggy, of the first book.

It was an unexpected but pleasant surprise a few years ago to find that Dave Barry, whose column is read, laughed at, and enjoyed the world over by hundreds upon thousands of people, could actually write stories. But in his debut novel, Big Trouble, he proved just that. His follow up, Tricky Business, trails in the wake of 'Trouble'...literally. The story, about a casino cruise ship and those who come to find themselves upon it on a fateful 'dark and stormy night', has many of the same trappings that made Barry's first foray into fiction so well received. Here we have interesting characters (among them, the dysfunctional members of a band called Johnny and the Contusions, a few fed-up cocktail waitresses, and an endearing pair of nursing home rebellers - Arnie and Phil), a plot that twists, turns, and eventually comes together in a way that will make you smack your head in amazement when you finally realize what's really going on.
The only real departure in this book is the violence that Barry inflicts on some of the characters we become attached to. While every character in Big Trouble survived to the end of the book, the body count in Tricky Business is fairly high, sometimes even used as a dark joke (as is the case with some unfortunate workers at the fictious Newspex Nine news station). It is at the same time appropriate to the story and disturbing. One almost expects Barry to resurrect his fallen characters at some point before the end - though he never does. This is, however, a small bone to pick with a book that is laugh-out-loud funny and just as entertaining as anything else Barry has come up with.
And, if you're a fan of Dave's style, that's saying a lot.

Tricky Business is Dave Barry's second novel. Like his first novel, Big Trouble, this work is set in south Florida, has elements of a crime novel, and is filled with the eccentric people that Barry creates so well. Unlike his books of nonfiction, both these novels contain what Mr. Barry calls "bad words." This is because his novels contain "unsavory characters" and they use bad words. Not all the characters are unsavory. Most are just eccentric, funny, or inept.

Although this novel is not as laugh out loud funny as Big Trouble, it attempts to compensate for this by having much more actual violence and sex. Speaking of sex, the song "Sex Pootie" by the Seminal Fluids, which played a prominent role in Big Trouble, makes a cameo appearance in Tricky Business. It must be a personal favorite of Mr. Barry.

The story is about one of the gambling ships that leave Miami every day to go out three miles into international waters for a couple of hours of entertainment and return. It is the only ship to go out with a hurricane approaching. It does this because it is owned by a gangster who uses it to pick up smuggled drugs from boats coming from the Bahamas and he can't miss a delivery. All the events in the novel take place the day of the storm.

If you like Dave Barry's humor, you will love his novels.

This is not your 13 year old's Dave Barry - this is an adult satire filled with dirty jokes, grotesque scenes and (gasp!) adult language. The story is about a going-nowhere band, a disgruntled shady executive, a couple cocktail waitresses, a couple retirees and the Miami mob in a mad-cap adventure off the shores of Florida.

There can be many criticisms levelled on the book (the sex, language and graphic violence to name three) that make it depart from the Dave Barry that we are used to. That keeps the reader off balance and wondering - is this a satire, a serious book, or just comedy? In the end, you're left laughing at both the direct story as well as the genre he parodies.

It's a light read, and if you don't finish it on a weekend afternoon, you really are too busy.

I love this book. I really hope Dave Barry writes more fiction in the future. I've read most of what Dave Barry's written, fiction or non-fiction, but nothing I've read so far compares to this(does that make sense? I don't care, I love this book...). It appears that Dave Barry has matured in his writing, yet still he maintains his humor every chapter. I own this book. You probably should too. If you like morbid humor and boats, buy this book.

I couldn't put this book down. I laughed out loud at least five times and finished it in one night. Very enjoyable "light" reading but funny and a good story. Would highly recommend as long as you don't mind a little "reality" with regard to language and a few rock and roll stoners! Great book.

"Tricky Business" is the story of a rundown cruise ship that makes nightly runs three miles offshore so people can gamble away their money. Of course, being a Dave Barry book, it includes a large assortment of oddball characters, including a pothead guitarist, a single-mom cocktail waitress, a guy in a conch costume, and an entrepreneur who specializes in both newspaper-filled car air bags and badly augmented breasts.

As someone who giggled and guffawed his way through Dave Barry's "Big Trouble," I eagerly awaited his second novel, fully expecting the same gonzo writing that made his first book so appealing. But when I sat down to read "Tricky Business," I instead found gangsters killing each other in ever more inventive and bloody ways, a repulsively detailed mass-vomiting scene, and truly gratuitous amounts of sex.

And yet the book would have been acceptable even with all this, had it been funny. Instead, the belly laughs that made "Big Trouble" so enjoyable are largely absent in this book, mostly replaced by weak grins and an occasional chuckle. There are a few very comical scenes involving such oddities as flatulence during sex and how the band winds up on this cruise ship to hell; these alone save "Tricky Business" from a one-star rating. But when I pick up a Dave Barry book, I really don't want to read in excruciating detail about how one lowlife amputates various body parts off another lowlife. I can see stuff like that on the evening news for free.

Sadly, Dave Barry has badly misfired with "Tricky Business." He should steer clear of murderously unfunny criminals and get back to what he's best at, namely booger jokes.

I'm a big Dave Barry fan. I rarely miss his weekly column, and have read many of his "non-fiction" books prior to his first novel, "Big Trouble", which I thoroughly enjoyed. So it was with great anticipation that I looked forward to the release of Tricky Business. I was only mildly disappointed. "Tricky Business" was slicker - more skillfully written - than "Trouble", but it has a darker, more ominous tone than Barry's typical writing. While has Barry succeeded in pulling off this slight divergence from his usual course, it comes at some expense to trademark wry wit and insightful observations of the dumb things people do. As in much of Barry's work, southern Florida (richy justified) bears the brunt of his light sarcasm. And the cast of characters, while memorable, is not up to par with the zany misfits and malcontents from Big Trouble. While "Business" will evoke many chuckles, I didn't find myself laughing out loud as I usually do when reading Dave Barry.

In the final analysis, though, this is a darkly humorous book that is worth the time and money. Longtime Barry fans will find enough of the master to hold interest, while the uninitiated may find Tricky Business has an acceptable alternative to Carl Hiaasen.