Rating: 
Summary: My Funny? Valentine
Review: If you enjoyed "Big Trouble", you'll love "Tricky Business." Bathroom humor notwithstanding, (there is a warning at the beginning), Dave Barry succeeds again with a bunch of wacky characters who find themselves thrown together on a casino ship. The band's rendition of the song "My Funny Valentine" is particularly hilarious.
Rating: 
Summary: It's all too familiar.
Review: When Big Trouble was published a few years ago, it felt like a mix of the best of Carl Hiaasen and Elmore Leonard. Big Trouble was entertaining, had quirky characters and, most importantly, was gut-wrenching funny. Now, Dave Barry is back with Tricky business. And although the novel has an interesting premise and a somewhat more serious storyline (and by that, I mean a higher body count), it all feels way too familiar for it to be fully satisfying in the end.This time around, we found ourselves on a casino ship called the Extravaganza of the Sea. And of course, bad things are about to happen to the people on board the ship. And just as in Big Trouble, we follow nearly half a dozen characters who are unrelated at first but who will all come together in the end. I have to hand my hat to Barry because the man knows how to link half a dozen story lines together and still make sense in the end. And the man knows funny. There are many jokes within the books that made me laugh out loud, the funniest being a gag that concerns a tv news station and its unfortunate crew. The Extravaganza goes to sea during a tropical storm, and all hell breaks loose. Problems keep on piling up as our characters try to struggle with crazy situation after crazy situation. And I have to admit that many of it is quite funny and entertaining at times. So why wasn't I fully satisfied with the book? Well, it followed the outline set by Big Trouble much too closely. Unrelated chracters finally brought together in the end, the stupid yet likeable good guys, the even stupider bad guys, the double entendres... Tricky Business seems to be Big Trouble set on a boat. I kept waiting for something great to happen, I kept waiting for Barry to surpise me, but it never came. Is the book funny? At times, yes. Is the book entertaining? More or less so. I could think of many worst ways to spend my time. The only problem is that I know Barry is capable of much better and much funnier.
Rating: 
Summary: South Florida, keep coming up with these characters!
Review: My only issue with Dave Barry's novels is that he does not write enough of them. If you enjoy Carl Hiaasen, you'll enjoy Barry. They both have you laughing out loud while reading.
Rating:
Summary: Too Funny Not to Be True
Review: South Florida is famous for its weather, drug dealers, blue haired senior citizens and sensational local news coverage. Dave Barry brings all the elements together in this hysterical tale of Tropical Storm Hector and a "cruise to nowhere" gambling boat. The truth is most South Floridians will recognize many of the characters who deliver our news, fuel our local economy and otherwise keep our narcs and cops getting overtime. This book is too funny not to be true.
Rating: 
Summary: Appalling
Review: I enjoyed Dave Barry's _Big Trouble_ very much, so I expected that _Tricky Business_ would cheer me up at the end of a bad day. It did not.
The book includes a warning that it contains foul language, but lets the gruesomeness of the story come as a shock to the unfortunate reader. It contains scenes of torture, a man choking to death on his own blood, and even castration. There is very little humor in this book, because most of what is attempts to be funny is in extremely bad taste. The characters are flat and unattractive, as opposed to _Big Trouble_, whose characters were mostly flat but at least enjoyable. The plot consists mainly of violence. _Tricky Business_ is to be avoided by everyone, but especially by Dave Barry fans who do not want to be both disappointed and disgusted.
Rating:
Summary: Dave Barry *IS* making this up
Review: Dave Barry has been one of my favorite humorists since I read a long-ago column on how he makes two products in his woodshop: boards for whacking spiders, and sawdust. But my thrill at receiving this audiobook soon turned to disappointment when I saw the reader was Dick Hill. I'd heard Hill's halting voice before, and didn't think he'd sound young enough or funny enough to read Dave Barry. I was wrong! As the story progressed, I found Hill was able to do a surprising variety of voices, from backwater lowlife to Mob thug to bimbo with her mouth full (let's leave it at that) to a little girl, all with solid credibility. The best part was when he did a quick succession of 3 sound effects followed by 2 different voices as a powerboat sped across the water. The whole sequence is repeated many times, and it had to be difficult (I know, I tried it!). I laughed out loud whenever I heard it. His performance was less believable, however, when two people in a life preserver are being rescued, on the high seas, by a helicopter, and they are calmly talking, even whispering. But this is not a story of life-like realism. You must suspend disbelief and go along with the fact that, despite a raging tropical storm, all the various characters converge on the OUTSIDE deck of a boat (the last place anyone would willingly go), where they smoke and easily converse, easily board back and forth onto another boat, and survive getting tossed into the roaring ocean. If you can get past all that, there are a lot of humorous situations, not all ha-ha funny, but humorous. How the owner of the Extravaganza came to regret buying the boat and the unfortunate outcome of the NewsPlex Nine team stand out in my mind. Other things, like the flatulent floozy, missed the mark. But how can a book with sadistic torture scenes be considered humor? I don't mind the high body count, I don't mind the constant cursing, but the torture scenes went beyond the pale. After all, whacking spiders is funny; ripping their legs off is NOT.
Rating:
Summary: a real book, and real funny....
Review: I enjoy Dave Barry's columns, and I enjoyed his first novel, and enjoyed this novel as well. The trick is to not come to his novels expecting his column. I do not see why so many people have trouble with this concept. A novel is not a column, and cannot be no matter how hard you squint. This novel is more polished than the first, better plotted and the characters are more developed and more varied. There was plenty of humor, humor that took pages, sometimes chapters, to come to fruition, you got a problem with that? There were several scenes that made me laugh hard enough to be forced to put the book down to get my breath back, as well as a lot just good fun. There was also enough evil and suspense to make me enjoy the ending and resolution, something you do not get out of one of his columns. Dave Barry fans just need to come to grips with the fact that he can write both novels and columns and enjoy it!
Rating: 
Summary: Not quite.
Review: Dave Barry's first novel, Big Trouble, was a lighter-than-air affair; featherweight, utterly undemanding, but frequently very funny, and quite enjoyable in its way. This, his second, is every bit as light and undemanding, but generally worse in every way. It's much less funny, for one thing. Oh, there are laugh-out-loud moments here and there, but overall it's much lower on humor, and it has an unforunate number of grimly unfunny bodily function jokes. There's a hot babe roulette croupier, for instance, whose excessive flatulence is a running gag. Ha ha. And then there's a scene involving copious vomitting. It's not even slightly humorous, but I infer that it's supposed to be from the use of facetious phrases such as 'barf brigade.' It's not that I'm categorically opposed to crude humor, but it has to actually be *funny,* don't you know. These are not. So what's the book about when it's not going for laughs, then? Violence. Lots and lots of violence, including a few truly repellantly sadistic scenes. As you can imagine, these mesh with the novels lighter parts very uneasily, and they raise serious questions as to what exactly Barry was trying to accomplish with this novel. There's not much point in talking about the characters; they're the same sort of lazy stereotypes that populated Big Trouble, only more so. If there was a fun story built around them, this would be fine, but there's not. Having it take place on a gambling ship was a good idea, but that's about all. It's ultimately a pretty mundane thing with drug dealers--Barry tries to make you think it's a very elaborate, intricate plot, what with the dozens of characters and frequent quick narrative flips between them, but when you think about it you realize that it isn't, really. Pure illusion. And you'll have a lot of time to think about this as you sleepwalk through the long, dull, laugh-free climax. This coulda been something, but as it stands I really can't recommend it, even to those in the market for something light and fluffy. It's a muddled, confused novel, with enough unpleasantness to tip the scale away from the good parts. If you're curious, get it from a library. Buying this in hardcover would be insane.
Rating:
Summary: Lost At Sea
Review: I'll admit it. I'm a Dave Barry addict. I read the columns on line and have read most if not all of the books he's written. Certainly, this one has some funny moments. But it feels like Barry is torn between trying to produce a serious thriller and a book based on his tried and true humor. Personally I'd rather he just stuck to the humour -- when reading his books becomes more business than pleasure, it's time to get back to the basics. It's not that you won't enjoy this book -- you will -- and that's what I'm giving it four stars. But the laughs are few and far between; it's not the Barry I've come to know and love.
Rating:
Summary: Your Mother's Waffles
Review: 'Big Trouble' was very good and so is this second novel from everybody's buddy Dave Barry. I recently re-read two of my all-time humour favourites, Thorne Smith's 'Topper' and Steve Kelly's 'Rastus Reilly', then I read Barry's latest. 'Tricky Business' made me laugh a lot, following those two top acts, so it's a definite winner in my estimation. Barry's novels flow from the same wellspring of humour as do his newspaper columns but with the added delight of hilariously contrived plots, and characters we seem to know already, but get to know altogether more funnily(?), through Barry's insight. 'Tricky Business' propels its readers over land and sea and it's a great ride. Let's just hope Dave Barry lives forever. Where would we be without him?
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