Dan Jenkins reunites many of the most memorable and irascible characters from his most memorable and hilarious novels—starting with Semi-Tough. Billy Clyde Puckett, Shake Tiller, T. J. Lambert, Barbara Jane Bookman, Big Ed Bookman, Slick Henderson, Juanita Hutchins, Doris Steadman—the list goes on, and they're all packin' heat. It all begins when Herb's Café—modeled after a Fort Worth landmark renowned for its chicken-fried steak—goes up for sale after Herb's death and the establishment's disastrous sequel as a trendy restaurant featuring nouvelle cuisine. Tommy Earl Bruner buys the place, rehires most of the old staff, and invites all its former denizens for a grand celebration. Special commemorative edition of Jenkins's last novel, including a foreword by Tom Brokaw and an afterword by Sally Jenkins.

From Publishers WeeklyUnforgettable for his howlingly funny sendup of pro football in Semi-Tough and his equally droll spoof of the PGA Tour Dead Solid Perfect, columnist Jenkins (Golf Digest) is as irreverent and hip a sports satirist as ever tarred and feathered a poor unwary and overpaid former Muni-caddy from Fort Worth, Tex., without benefit of anesthetic. In this latest blasphemous roasting of the PGA, Jenkins's first novel in 25 years, he offers up nonhero Bobby Joe Grooves, aka "Spin" to his friends, a latter-day self-styled golf historian who resigned to his role as a "light-running money-whipped, steer-job, three-jack, give-up artist" (read: journeyman touring pro) has made a "separate peace." Bobby Joe has become disenchanted with the cheating ways (on and off the course) of the European darling superstar, Knut Thorssun, aka Knut the Nuke, who, largely thanks to his cavalier disregard for rules, has two majors to his credit. Twice-divorced, Bobby Joe is keeping his libido in bounds with Cheryl Haney, a Hooters-class Fort Worth real estate agent. Struggling to make the Ryder Cup team for the first time in his 16-year career, Bobby Joe is having a hard time pacifying his main squeeze and exes, and fighting off a self-styled wannabe golf hack who insists on calling him "Spin" and wants to pen his memoir. To make matters worse, when Cheryl learns he strayed with his amateur partner's horny wife at Pebble Beach, she goes into knee-lock. Hawaiian Open to Ryder Cup, the tour (and thereby the tale) comes down to crossed-putters mano a mano with Knut. A sort of "Saturday Night Live does Harvey Penick's Little Red Book," this goofy encyclopedia of golf shines with rays of simple truth. (Aug.)Forecast: This book will be catnip for golf lovers, and the upcoming Ryder Cup matches should feed into the pre-pub hype. Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc.FromIf most golf novels sound like either Saturday Night Live sketches or Sunday-morning sermons, Jenkins definitely belongs in the late-night category. His Dead Solid Perfect (1974) virtually invented the comic golf novel. Now he returns to the PGA Tour for another attempt to disprove the notion that professional golfers (other than Tiger) are bland, charisma-deprived ciphers. His hero is a good ol' Fort Worth boy called Bobby Joe Grooves. Bobby may not be the best golfer on the tour (he's never won a major tournament), but he is definitely no cipher. We pick up Bobby Joe's story in Hawaii, where he has just "three-jacked" (three-putted) his way to a disappointing nineteenth-place finish in the Hawaiian Open, which is why he's sitting in a bar downing what he calls "Juniors" (J & B scotch). As Bobby Joe grinds his way through a year on the tour, trying to qualify for the Ryder Cup while dealing with two needy ex-wives and a jealous girlfriend off the course, Jenkins keeps the jokes coming, managing to offend just about everyone with any political ax to grind. Those who enjoy seeing feathers ruffled will enjoy the PC-bashing, but the jokes themselves tend to be a bit of a hit-and-miss affair. Better is the fascinating golf history, especially regarding course design, that Jenkins filters into the story, along with his uncanny ability to expose the pretensions of both golfers and their fans. Not the landmark its predecessor was, but still dead-solid entertainment for anyone who cares about professional golf. Bill OttCopyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

Decades before it saturated the airwaves, Dan Jenkins and Bud Shrake actually invented reality TV—and skewered it into a comic novel that was way ahead of its time. Frank Mallory is a big gun at one of the four major networks. Cruising around Manhattan in his "Silver Goblet," a Rolls Royce limo, he finds that life in the fast lane is beginning to unravel. Having to deal with the departure of his wife, his boss "The Big Guy," and crazed Hollywood stars—while at the same time having to maintain a high-stakes job—all tend to make Frank Mallory, well, act out. After Frank struggles to fill all his number-four network's prime-time slots—it tends to lag behind CBS, NBC, and ABC—the Big Guy forces him to create a show called "Just Up The Street," which is meant to entertain ordinary Americans with the "real" lives of other ordinary Americans. Ultimately the resulting script causes the Big Guy's downfall and forces everyone else to return to a reality...