How do two humorists effectively collaborate on a novel? By each writing the narrative for his character, alternating the perspectives in an insane adventure. Phillip Horkman is a by-the-rules kind of guy, a pet-store owner and soccer referee. Jeffrey Peckerman is a profane forensic plumber who thinks the world is populated with jerks, with the exception of himself. The New Jersey suburban dads collide when Horkman disqualifies what would have been a game-winning score made by Peckerman's daughter. The two embark on escalating violence that takes them on a wild car chase that gets viewed as a possible terrorist threat by the police. On the run, they travel by cruise ship, submarine, helicopter, freighter, and airplane to Cuba, Somalia, China, and the Middle East, wreaking havoc and inadvertently checking off a lot of items on the U.S. geopolitical to-do list along the way. Barry, humor columnist for the Miami Herald, and Zweibel, award-winning comedy writer originally with Saturday Night Live, are more than effective in this collaboration, although the gag of two lunatics on the run sometimes wears a bit thin. HIGH-DEMAND BACKSTORY: Pulitzer Prize-winning humorist Barry and Emmy, Thurber, and Tony Award winner Zweibel bring plenty of star power to a comic novel that will be supported by a national print and electronic advertising campaign.--Bush, Vanessa Copyright 2010 Booklist

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Humorists Barry (Tricky Business) and Zweibel (The Other Shulman) team up to spin the madcap adventure of Philip Horkman and Jeffrey A. Peckerman, who meet on the soccer pitch of a Fort Lee, N.J., girls' 10-and-under league championship game, where Horkman calls Peckerman's daughter offside. Alternating chapters of mutual loathing between Horkman, a coarse, "forensic plumber," and Peckerman, the progressive owner of a pet store called the Wine Shop, chronicle a fight that escalates by accident and miscalculation to encompass high seas piracy and revolution. As unwitting as the characters in Woody Allen's Without Feathers-or, better yet, as inept as Bananas' Fielding Mellish-Horkman and Peckerman stumble over themselves trying to escape police, nudists, a lemur named Buddy, a tank in Tiananmen Square, fruit-wielding Somalis, Yemeni terrorists, Chuck E. Cheese, and Donald Trump. Energetic, scatological, and profoundly silly. Agents: (for Barry) Amy Berkower, Writers House; (for Zweibel) Laura Nolan, Paradigm. (Jan. 10) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.