Big Trouble

Big Trouble is Dave Barry's first novel. Barry, a longtime columnist for The Miami Herald, set the novel's events in and around Miami, Florida. Plot Eliot Arnold is a divorced, recently-fired newspaper reporter trying to start his own advertising and public relations agency. His teenaged son, Matt's nighttime attempt to "kill" his high-school classmate, Jenny, unfortunately coincides with a real assassination attempt on her alcoholic, abusive stepfather, Arthur Herk, by two freelance hit men from New Jersey. In the ensuing confusion, Eliot meets Arthur's wife, Jenny's mother Anna, and the two are instantly taken with each other. When Arthur, spooked by the gunfire, runs to the room of the Herks' Latin maid, Nina, she panics and runs outside the house, where she is befriended by Puggy, a young homeless man living in a tree on the property. Interviewed by Miami Police officers Monica and Walter, Arthur denies having any enemies, while secretly knowing that his employer, a corrupt contracting firm, has caught him embezzling money to pay off his gambling debts. Arthur decides to turn state's evidence, and, in order to ensure he is taken seriously by the police, intends to buy a missile from a pair of Russian arms dealers and turn it over to the police, claiming it belongs to his employer. But when Arthur goes to the dive bar the arms dealers are using as a front, he, the Russians, and Puggy (who earns a small wage helping to fetch and carry the crates containing the dealers' merchandise) are held up by Snake and Eddie, two dimwit grifters previously ejected from the bar. Mistaking Arthur for a "kingpin", Snake concludes that whatever is in the suitcase Arthur was buying must be valuable, and grabs it (ignoring the briefcase containing $10,000 in cash that Arthur brought with him). Jenny arranges to let Matt "kill" her in accordance with the rules of the game, at the back of a nearby mall, but they are spotted by Jack Pendick, a wannabe-policeman who mistakes Matt's squirt gun for a real firearm and starts shooting his own gun at Matt. They flee to Jenny's house and call Eliot, who arrives just before Snake and Eddie enter the house, holding Arthur at gunpoint. The whole family is taken captive, along with Officers Monica and Walter, who arrive to investigate the shooting at the mall.