Big Trouble

Dave Barry

Penguin, Jul 6, 2010 - Fiction - 304 pages

Dave Barry makes his fiction debut with a ferociously funny novel of love and mayhem in south Florida.

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.

Contents

• Section 1: 1
• Section 2: 29
• Section 3: 45
• Section 4: 67
• Section 5: 91
• Section 6: 111
• Section 7: 131
• Section 8: 149
• Section 9: 177
• Section 10: 201
• Section 11: 216
• Section 12: 238
• Section 13: 266
• Section 14: 284
• Section 15: 287

About the author

From 1983 to 2004, Dave Barry wrote a weekly humor column for The Miami Herald, which in 1988 won a Pulitzer Prize for Commentary. He is the author of more than thirty books, including such bestsellers as the nonfiction Live Right and Find Happiness (Although Beer Is Much Faster), You Can Date Boys When You're Forty, and I'll Mature When I'm Dead; the novels Big Trouble, Tricky Business, and Insane City; the very successful YA Peter Pan novels (with Ridley Pearson); and his Christmas story The Shepherd, the Angel, and Walter the Christmas Miracle Dog. Two of his books--Big Trouble and Dave Barry's Guide to Guys--have been turned into movies. For a while, his life was even a television series, Dave's World, but then it was canceled. The series. Not the life. For many years, Dave was also a guitarist with the late, infamous, and strangely unlamented band the Rock Bottom Remainders.

Bibliographic information

• Title: Big Trouble
• Author: Dave Barry
• Publisher: Penguin, 2010
• ISBN: 1101442220, 9781101442227
• Length: 304 pages
• Subjects: Fiction / Humorous / General; Fiction / Thrillers / Crime; Fiction / Thrillers / Suspense