Pest Control: A Novel - Hardcover

Fitzhugh, Bill

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0380973480 ISBN 13: 9780380973484

Publisher: Avon Books, 1996

Synopsis

Starting an all-natural pest control company, Bob Dillan accidentally lands in the hands of Marcel, who is seeking an assassin to make a million-dollar hit, and when Bob unknowingly accepts the job, a comedy of errors ensues.

About this title

About the Author:

Bill Fitzhugh has worked in radio, television, and film. He is the author of Pest Control, The Organ Grinders, and Cross Dressing. He lives in Los Angeles, California, where he is at work on his next novel.

From Kirkus Reviews:

A sweetly comic thriller that finally answers the age-old question: What if a sad-sack New York exterminator got his antennae crossed with the professionals who wipe out Homo sapiens? At his wit's (and checkbook's) end after walking off his job killing bugs with lethal cocktails, Bob Dillon schemes at his own unique approach to extermination: breeding predatory strains of insects who'll feast on termites and roaches without developing chemical-resistant new strains of pests or loading the planet with hazardous toxins. It's a plan with all the makings of an American success story, but it spins out of control when Bob's ad falls into the hands of a middleman who brokers assassinations and thinks Bob's sobriquet of ``the Exterminator'' is a veiled reference to his status as a hit man. Getting a faint whiff of the trouble in his future, Bob begs off the lucrative job he's offered. But when the victim is accidentally killed anyway, the middleman, assuming Bob's managed the job with unusual finesse, duly sends him his fee. So far, everything's as innocuous as the endless stream of double-entendres about extermination--except that (1) the UPS package with all that lovely money gets held up en route to Bob; (2) his wife and daughter, impatient with his uncompromisingly idealistic approach to pest control, walk out on him; and (3) the brother and murderer of a Bolivian druglord who wants to cover up his own crime screams that it was the work of the Exterminator and offers a $10 million bounty to whoever kills Bob--attracting all the top exterminators in the field. There's the subtle Chinese knife expert, the glamorous Frenchwoman, the parvenu Cowboy, the transvestite dwarf, and the melancholy, suicidal top man, whose unlikely friendship with his prospective target is the high point of this generally predictable tale. A first novel that's not sharply enough written to offer serious competition to Florida farceurs Hiaasen and Shames, but consistently sunny and good-humored. (Film rights to Warner Brothers) -- Copyright ©1997, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

About this edition

• Publisher: Avon Books
• Publication date: 1996
• ISBN 10: 0380973480
• ISBN 13: 9780380973484
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 312