Two years ago, Ridley Pearson of St. Louis was reading the story of Peter Pan to his 5-year-old daughter, Paige, at bedtime. One night she asked, "But Daddy, how did Peter Pan meet Captain Hook?"

It's one of those unanswerable questions that make parents realize that a smart child is not an unmixed blessing. But this dad had a slew of best- selling cop thrillers such as the recent "The Body of David Hayes" to his credit. His two daughters are named Paige and Storey. He knew a good book idea when he heard one. Pearson said his reply was, "Paige, I don't know yet, but I think I'll write that book."

"Peter and the Starcatchers" is flying off the shelves. The first printing was for 350,000 copies and a third printing is under way.

But he didn't write it alone. Soon after his kid asked him that question, Pearson was in Miami to play with the Rock Bottom Remainders, a writers' band that plays literary benefits. Other members are Amy Tan, Stephen King, Scott Turow, Mitch Albom and Pearson's friend, the Pulitzer-Prize winning humorist Dave Barry. He stayed at Barry's house and told him his idea for a prequel to Peter Pan. Then he surprised Barry by asking him to write the book with him.

"I'm there," Barry said. He and Pearson -- in San Francisco, now on book tour -- were having a drink in a nearby restaurant while waiting for their 7 p.m. reading at A Clean Well-Lighted Place for Books on Van Ness.

Barry's qualifications include inventing National Talk Like a Pirate Day (Sept. 19). It came out of a column he wrote. "The response was unbelievable. They say people in America don't want to be involved." Barry has also written two novels, including "Big Trouble," which was made into a movie, and 23 collections of humor, including "Boogers Are My Beat." The TV show "Dave's World" was based on two of his books.

That very morning when they agreed to write the book together, the friends started riffing on the backstory J.M. Barrie never filled in for us. How can Peter Pan fly? Why doesn't he get old? What is the story with his missing shadow? Oh and how did Peter meet Captain Hook? And who is Captain Hook?"

Kicking ideas around over Raisin Bran is one thing. Writing a whole book with another person, especially when one lives in St. Louis and the other in Miami, is another. "We both had the feeling, 'Oh, Jesus, how will we do this?' " recalled Pearson. Neither has collaborated before, if you don't count their contributions to an ill-fated nine-author novel called "The Putt at the End of the World," about a terrorist-infiltrated golf tournament.

The authors evolved into a "pingpong collaboration," as they call it, using e-mail.

"For a while I did only words that begin with 'w.' " said Barry modestly. He wore a green Hawaiian shirt. His voice was light and boyish, his limp brown haircut looked better than in some book jacket photos.

"I did adverbs without 'ly' in them," said Pearson. He was the more formally dressed of the two, in a black suit jacket and airplane-rumpled pants.

Actually, each wrote a set of characters and then turned it over to the other person to edit. "Dave simplifies, and finds the humorous angle," said Pearson, who himself likes a complicated plot. He outlines his work meticulously -- Barry saw huge charts in Pearson's office, with minute description of each character. "I don't even know the names of my characters," said Barry.

But they claim they worked well together -- once Pearson got used to getting his work back from Miami with half of it gone.

"I had to take out the scenes he wrote where Peter has sex with the dolphin," Barry broke in. "He tried to sneak them back. Using tiny little fonts."

The book begins with a mysterious trunk being loaded aboard a ship taking Peter and four unlucky other orphans off to be servants for an island king whose snake eats servants. The authors came up with the trunk before they figured out what was in it. Maybe it held Tinker Bell . "With little fairy poop in the trunk," Barry said. "No facilities, you know."

The day Barry realized what was really in the trunk, e-mails winged back and forth. They had the book outlined by sundown. This key plot device was star stuff, the magic Tinker Bell will later find useful. For now it makes the ship's rats hover in the air, disconcerting poor Peter as he roams the ship in search of something besides wriggling grubs to eat and listens to shouts of "Avast the main mizzen!" The captain of the ship is Cyrus Pembridge, who knows nothing of sailing but whose wife owned the shipping company and wanted him permanently at sea. (The ship in fact is called the Never Land.)

Naturally, the authors researched all this nautical lore. "We spent 19 days with pirates," said Pearson. But not with very seamanlike pirates, it would appear.

"We are asking people not to try to actually sail a boat using any of the instructions in this book," Barry said.

If they did, they'd have to know how to run a giant black bra up the mast.

"Ridley wrote that."

Pearson waved his hand no. He's drinking seltzer. "I sent Dave a scene where the pirates stitched together the undergarments from all the wenches they'd had on board. It came back as a giant bra."

Barry had just remarked that it was a relief to work on a book where he didn't have to think of something funny every minute. He sipped his Chardonnay thoughtfully. "We knew for a fact that the original J.M. Barrie story contains subtle references to a brassiere of unusual size," he told The Chronicle. "You have to know where to look."

Neither of them even reread the story. "It's like 'The Wizard of Oz.' We all know the story," said Barry. "We just wanted it to be fun."

They did find "floor plans" of ships on the Internet and e-mailed them back and forth to figure out where Peter was onboard.

Ridley and Barry sold the book to Hyperion, the publishing arm of Disney, based on an outline and a few chapters. Their editor's first name is -- Wendy -- Wendy Lefkon, editorial director at Disney Editions. "We told Disney, we can't do this book with you unless we can have an editor named Wendy," Barry said. "She legally changed her name. And her gender. We owe her. Him."

The originator of the tale was also named Barrie.

Barrie. Barry. "It's one of those strange coincidences. Did you realize that Ridley's name all though childhood was Tinker Bell?"

The two did not set out to write a children's book, a notorious challenge for authors of adult books. They just wrote the story. The reading audience is, according to Pearson, "Anyone with 18 dollars."

"We don't see it as mystical, taking humanity forward," said Barry. "We don't care if humanity goes backward."

At the reading, they took turns reading paragraphs. Pearson stood with his hands folded, wearing glasses below his black dime-store pirate scarf. Every time a truly excellent question was asked, they gave out eye patches.

"Are you going to give an eye patch to every kid who asks a question?" asked a 10-year-old wiseacre.

There are plans afoot for two more books. The next book in what Pearson calls "a trilogy of sequels" is due out two years from now, with the next to follow a year later.

No movie deal in the offing, alas. "Finding Neverland," starring Johnny Depp and Kate Winslet, bombed last year, and "Hook" with Robin Williams did not do so hot, either.

The original "Peter Pan" was not a book at all, but a 1904 London play by Barrie, a diminutive Scot. It was a musical on Broadway in 1924 and 1950, then again in 1954, staged by Jerome Robbins with Mary Martin as Peter. That one went on TV, where 8-year-old Barry was dumbstruck at the sight of "this middle-aged lady on wires who was supposed to be a boy." It also gave a name to a condition Barry claims not to suffer from, the Peter Pan Syndrome, used to describe men who act like boys. "I'm not mature enough to be Peter Pan."

The play became a book when Barrie wrote what was first called "Peter and Wendy" in 1911. "Later he wrote a prequel himself," noted Pearson. "No one read it." In 1929, Barrie donated the copyright to the story and characters to the Great Ormond Street Children's Hospital. The British hospital still owns it, and last month announced a nationwide competition to find an author to write a sequel. Meanwhile, "Peter and the Starcatchers" cannot be sold in England. "I think they probably don't like our book," said Pearson.

Paige Pearson, now 7, read all 400 pages. She likes it.

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