Before readers get to Page 1 of “Tricky Business,” Dave Barry has some words of warning about his second novel:

“This book contains some bad words.”

It contains some bad people, too.

Bullets and fists fly almost as frequently as do the cuss words in this comic caper set aboard a cruise ship that takes gamblers three miles offshore for salty breezes and the opportunity to lose their shirts. What the passengers and most crew members don’t know is that while the ship is out at sea, its owners are using it as part of a drug-smuggling and money-laundering operation.

The ship is the Extravaganza of the Seas, and it does its dirty work in the waters off southern Florida, familiar territory to Barry, who writes for The Miami Herald.

On the evening that serves as the story’s setting, Tropical Storm Hector is raging. Throwing thoughts of safety to the wind (of which there is plenty), the ship’s operators say to heck with Hector and set sail for the scheduled rendezvous with a smaller boat manned by some unsavory characters and carrying bundles of illegal drugs.

This business is indeed tricky, and on this stormy night, just about everything goes wrong for heroes and villains alike: Some are shot; others fall out of a boat (or into one); some get seasick and make a mess; some are double-crossed; and one naked fellow is chased around the boat by a flatulent, knife-wielding roulette croupier.

The ship’s corrupt owner, who made his fortune in an auto-repair business that replaced deployed air bags with stolen ones, has chosen this night to appear on the ship dressed like a giant pink conch.

There’s chaos ashore as well: In a blackly comic series of scenes, local TV news reporters are beset by one tragedy after another as they head out to cover the storm.

Among the main characters who aren’t crooked is Wally, leader of the ship’s band and a frustrated musician whose mother is obsessed with making waffles, which no one eats. And Fay, a single mom and shipboard cocktail waitress whose charms unhinge Wally’s tongue when he tries to talk to her.

Good guys too are Phil and Arnie, feisty octogenarians who have sneaked away from their seniors home to donate their Social Security checks to the floating casino.

After considerable confusion, calamity and carnage, justice triumphs, thanks, in part, to some unlikely heroes.