Reporters do not have strong do-it-yourself skills

Or so Eliot Arnold informs in the funniest mystery I've ever read, Dave Barry's Big Trouble. Eliot is a former newspaper reporter struggling to make ends meet at his advertising company, a job which largely consists of licking the boots of the Client From Hell. His son Matt is engrossed in a high-school game of Killer (known as Hitman where I grew up), particularly since his squirt-gun target happens to be the pretty and popular Jenny Herk. Jenny's mother is married to Arthur, an abusive drunk who happens to have made himself quite unpopular by stealing from his employer. Added to the mix are a pair of professional whack artists (Harry and Leonard), a lovable bum named Puggy, incompetent thieves, and a pair of Russian arms dealers running the worst bar in Miami. With a cast of characters more colorful than your typical Rainbow Brite and a slapstick botched murder plot, Barry has all the right ingredients for a hilarious first novel.

I'll freely admit that I love Dave Barry. When I read his columns, I can hear the deadpan delivery that makes me laugh until incontinence becomes an issue of concern. Big Trouble is no exception - I haven't laughed this hard reading a book in quite a while. Barry's descriptions of a dog named Roger ("the product of many generations of hasty, irresponsible dog sex") and his twin obsessions, food and his mortal foe The Enemy Toad, had me laughing so hard that my own dog was afraid to sit on the couch with me. The guy is potentially a nutcase, but he's also a nutcase that needs to write more books.