Ben Mears, a successful writer who grew up in the town of Jerusalem's Lot, Cumberland County, Maine, has returned home following the death of his wife. Once in town he meets local high school teacher Matt Burke and strikes up a romantic relationship with Susan Norton, a young college graduate.
Is Dave Barry going mature on us? Well, no. But in Dave Barry Turns 40, he does do some thinking out loud about the aging process, aiming his thoughts at his "career-pursuing, insurance-buying, fitness-observing, Lamaze-class-taking, breast-feeding, data-processing, mortgage-paying, Parents'-Night-attending, business-card-exchanging, compact-disc-owning, tooth-flossing" contemporaries. Funny and true-to-life, especially if you were born before 1957.
Humorist Barry demonstrates once again that he has reached that plateau of success where he can do no wrong-almost. This second novel represents something of a decline from Big Trouble, his first venture into fiction, which emerged as an incident-crowded mystery topped off with rapid-fire laughs and a dash of satire. This time, the laughs are not much more than titters, and the incidents are only intermittently compelling. In brief, the story is built around events on one of the floating casinos that takes paying customers three miles off the Florida coast each night to gamble. It leads readers into a crazy complexity of money laundering, drug dealing, murder, sex, violence, hijacking, and undercover work. As it is written by Barry, the book probably will meet with a certain amount of popular favor, but a caveat is in order: This is not the Barry of his syndicated columns or his nonfiction books. As he himself puts it, "This book contains some bad words," which he justifies by saying that his "unsavory characters" talk that way. A likely story.
Steve Martin - The Pleasure Of My Company Daniel Pecan Cambridge, 30, 35, 38 or 27, depending on how he feels that day, is a young man whose life is rich and full, provided he never leaves his Santa Monica apartment. After all, outside there are 8-inch-high curbs and there's always the horrible chance he might see a gas station attendant wearing a blue hat. So, except for the occasional trip to the Rite Aid to admire the California girl Zandy and to buy earplugs because they're on sale, he stays home a lot.
For 1979 Steve Martin returned to The Boardinghouse nightclub in San Francisco for his third comedy LP. Comedy Is Not Pretty is rather crude, particularly in Steve's somewhat embarassing sketch on Jackie Onassis. It nonetheless does hold up well, from his accident with a drinking glass onward. His Sound Effects gag is quite funny, and he brings out his Wild & Crazy trademark when he growls that the audience thinks he's A Rubberhead.
