TRICKY BUSINESS

Dave Barry

Piatkus £6.99 Rel: August

Reviewed by L. J. Hurst

What will SHOTS editor Mike Stotter say when he learns that I have not read the book he sent me before writing this review of it?

How much longer can I delay before I admit that I have not opened the book lying before me, and that I have done no more than type the price and ISBN from the back cover?

Is there any excuse at all for a reviewer to do what I have done?

Luckily, there is, if, like me, you hadn't been able to wait for the paperback of Dave Barry's second crime novel and had bought the trade edition instead.

Perhaps I should not have re-read it as I sat in the out-patients department of the Derbyshire Royal Infirmary, laughing out loud as the patients went in and out. On the other hand, that would not be of place in TRICKY BUSINESS, because this is dirtier and blacker but just as funny as BIG TROUBLE, Barry's first novel. Even reading events and descriptions a second time did not detract from their surprising black humour.

When you realise that half the plot of this gangsters-on-a-gambling-boat-romp revolves around three, if not four, sets of wide boys and low-lifes planning double-crosses and triple- crosses, of going even lower than their scummy low-life partners can imagine they could go, you know that things are not going to be nice. And when you realise that two of the heroes of this story are escaped from an old people's home - only just this side of incontinence, but slipping the other side of falling asleep at the wheel - you know that Dave Barry is not going to play up the heroic nature of his characters. In fact, he has a prefix in which you warns you bad things are going to be.

This is a comedy in the sense that the good (well, not criminal) characters are not permanently hurt at the end of the story and all the villains are dead, but I guess that makes it a black comedy, and, despite SHOTS's rules on giving away a denouement, I think it's acceptable to reveal that. On the other hand I do not propose to reveal how this all comes to pass - even the old codgers show they have something upstairs (just read how they escape from their Home for the night out, for example). Dave Barry also manages to handle the double-crosses pretty well, and when his protagonist "shows the badge" it comes as a surprise.

So this is not a perfect work if you think the end should not be signalled so early, but well up there if it's laughter you're after, and pretty good on the plot in-between. You might not like anyone you read about, though.