Dave Barry's Insane City

Dave Barry's Insane City is a tremendously fun novel that romps through a Miami full of grifters, pimps, thugs, sweet-hearted beachbunnies, honorable men with pythons, seductive women with spiked drinks who'll rob you blind, dope-sniffing dogs and the cops who handle them, and a girl-crazed orangutan.

Enter Seth Weinstein, who is about to marry Tina, a woman beyond his wildest dreams: beautiful, rich, brilliant, principled -- the daughter of a powerful, uptight billionaire, who has been brought up to seize her goals and never back down. Which is a far cry from Seth, who is a loser who tweets about feminine hygiene products for a marketing company that pays him to astroturf unintentionally humorous consumer packaged goods.

Seth, Tina, and their friends and family descend upon Miami for the wedding. But a comedy of errors, each more improbable than the last, soon has Seth in custody of a refugee from Haiti and her two small children, as well as an angry stripper and her muscle, and the aforementioned man-with-python and sweet-hearted beachbunny. It's a long story, but at least he's doing better than his groomsmen, who have been robbed of everything (including, for one gentleman, all his clothes including his underwear) and dumped on Miami beach.

Though the characters here are stock figures from central casting, the plot is an insane, glorious hairball of best-laid-plans gone wrong, a cross between Fawlty Towers and Weekend at Bernies, building to a crescendo that had me literally hooting with laughter on an airplane. Dave Barry is a funny man. Take the murder-mystery plot out of a great Carl Hiaasen novel, turn the weirdness and absurdity up to 11, and you've got Insane City.

Insane City

• [Jorpho]

  Huzzah!  He’s taken a break from writing Peter Pan novels!

  Big Trouble was delightful, but I never did get around to Tricky Business.

• [Preston Sturges]

  He’s not morphing into Carl Hiaasen is he? 

• [Ito Kagehisa]

  He’s right, Guido van Rossum is totally honorable.

• [B E Pratt]

  I think Carl Hiaasen already does a fine job of turning the weirdness up to 11. I mean, when he has a bad guy lose a forearm to a barracuda (or some such) and then have it replaced, NOT with a prosthesis but with a weed wacker…well,  the liquid I unfortunately had in my mouth at that moment exited my nose.
  BTW, I really want to see the Rock Bottom Remainders http://www.rockbottomremainders.com/

  • [ophmarketing]

    Unfortunately, the “band” disbanded last year, after their 20th anniversary gig. Perhaps a reunion tour someday…

• [Jim Saul]

  So have the film rights been optioned yet? Owen Wilson to star?