Tricky Business
by By Barry, Dave
Category: Fiction , Humorous , General

Critics everywhere welcomed the fiction debut of Dave Barry, when they were able to recover, that is: "A book so enjoyable you have to put it down on the floor to keep from finishing it too fast and being reduced to staring mournfully at its cover, wishing you could read it again for the first time" (San Francisco Chronicle). But Dave isn't finished with them yet, not when there is Tricky Business to conduct.The Extravaganza of the Seas is a 5,000-ton cash cow, a top-heavy tub whose sole function is to carry gamblers three miles from the Florida coast, take their money, then bring them back so they can find more money. In the middle of a tropical storm one night, these are among the people who will be involved with it: Fay Benton, a single mom and cocktail waitress desperate for something to go right for a change; Johnny and the Contusions, a ship's band with so little talent they are, well, the ship's band; Arnold and Phil, two refugees from the Beaux Arts Senior Center; Lou Tarant, a wide, bald man who has killed nine people, though none recently; and an assortment of uglies with names like Tark and Kaz whose job it is to facilitate the ship's true business, which is money laundering or drug smuggling or... something.What happens to them all in the midst of the fiercest storm in years, the unpredictable ways in which this trip will change their lives and send them ricocheting off one another like a giant game of pinball, is the story of this astonishing, wickedly satisfying, all-too-human novel by "one of the funniest writers alive" (Carl Hiaasen).