Tricky Business.

Dave Barry. 2002. Read by Dick Hill. 5 tapes. 7 hrs. Brilliance. 1-59086-414-x. $69.25. Vinyl; plot, reader notes. A

The author begins his story with a warning that there is bad language in this story, and there certainly is--along with shady characters, drugs, violence, and an almost illegal amount of humor and ridiculousness. Barry would say that's because its subject matter, South Florida and its panoply of citizens, is ridiculous. Everything in Barry's story is extreme, beginning with the "Extravaganza of the Sea," the seedy casino boat that is the setting for the main action of the story with special emphasis on all the odors humans can produce. Barry's humor relies on details and vivid and often raunchy descriptions of both people and places that through exaggeration remind us of the ridiculous all around us-ranging from the "sumptuous buffet" of creamed mystery meat (perhaps weasel), to the characters who begin as stereotypes and end up as totally original. There is a plot concerning drug running gone bad, not that it matters. Barry takes the comic crime novel genre to a new level, kind of like Donald Westlake on speed, and reader Hill has just the right flippancy in his reading to carry it off. Nola Theiss, Sanibel, FL