Book Review: Too Much Stuff by Don Bruns

Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure meets Carl Hiaasen on spring break, only the characters inToo Much Stuff are even less mature responsible adults. Instead of a time travelling phone birth, out ‘heroes’ have an oil leaking box truck. The policophobic (fear of the police) James Lessor and his best friend ‘Skip’ Moore have formed the More Or Less Detective Agency. Notice I didn’t say run as these two bumbling slackers couldn’t run a pair of cheap panty hose getting them off of a beach bunny. Think of a Jimmy Buffet song about misadventure, and you will have no trouble imagining Skip and James.

Mary Trueblood is the great-granddaughter of Matthew Kriegel, who is the fictional finance director for the Florida East Coast railway, which along with Kriegel, pretty much disappeared in the Great Labor Day Hurricane of 1935. Along with roughly a ton of gold bars.

Mary has offered the boys a half a percent of the value of the gold, plus expenses, if they find it. She is in possession of a cryptic letter, supposedly written by great-granddad, that hints at the location of a map to where he stashed the gold as the hurricane approached. What Mary doesn’t disclose is that she had previously hired two other shady detectives to find the gold, and they haven’t been heard from since.

On the approach to Islamorada, Fla., the pair are menaced by a Harley-Davidson rider, sporting a gold fender (the bike) and a black-out facemask (the rider) who splashes the side of their box truck with black paint. Armed with a thousand dollars in expense money on a prepaid ATM card, and an endless supply of oil for the truck, our erstwhile detectives check in to the Pelican Cove resort and go about the business of all Florida detectives: Drinking beer and hitting on every female in sight.

But when a dead body is found in their room shortly after they check in, the vacation is interrupted. James is arrested for questioning, but is uncooperative due to his policophobia. So the boys call in their secret weapon. Skip's girlfriend Em has everything they’ll need to crack the case in her purse, including a nail file, scuba equipment, and a Porsche Carrera… and extra oil for the truck.

Article Author: The Dirty Lowdown

I was born in Pomona, California at a very young age. I had a pretty normal childhood…or I was a pretty normal child hood if mom is telling the story. I was a paperboy and washed cars, I bussed tables, I was a soda fountain jock jerk and a manic …

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