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Pest Control

Pest Control

List Price: $7.50
Your Price: $6.75
Product Info Reviews

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Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Awesome!
Review: Pest Control by Bill Fitzhugh is a truly wonderful novel. Fitzhugh takes a classic mystery story set in New York and adds a bunch of weird charachters and plot twists. The book is about an exterminator and his family. The exterminator is appalled by the use of pesticides to kill bugs and is creating his own all natural method using his genetically engineered assasin bugs. He quits his job and sees an ad in the paper offering 50,000 bucks for an extermination job. He sends in a resume and is given the job, unaware that his victim is to be a swiss millionaire. The guy dies anyway, and asassins around the world flock to NY to eliminate their new competitor. Klaus, a soft-hearted crack asassin, befriends him, and the rest of the story is a hilarious chase through the big apple. The book is often found under mystery in bookstores, but it is really a comedy. This book is definetly a read for anyone with a sense of humor!

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Cracked me up
Review: This is a very funny book, in my opinion the best of Fitzhugh's work that I have read so far. The Organ Grinders is also worth reading although I did not have quite as much fun with it as I did with Pest Control. Not great literature, but a lot of fun to read. The musical allusions are clever and enhance this enjoyable work.

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: Thoroughly Entertaining!!!
Review: This is a great book with many similarities (intentional?) to Shakespeare's Comedy of Errors. It is a story of how one man, who is down on his luck strikes out on his own to begin his own revolutionary new extermination business, but somehow gets caught up with a group of a different kind of exterminator. With so many twists and turns it would be hard to say much without ruining it for others, but if you like a fast-paced fun and easy to read book, then here it is!

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: Out of Control
Review: "Pest Control" is a hard book to describe. I have to admit there are some truly hilarious scenes and situations in the book, but there are times when Fitzhugh bogs it down with his relentless insistence on letting us know how Bob feels about his work, his wife, and his child. Bob comes across as a selfish, inane, inept, and generally ridiculous man. Each time one of his cross-bred non-pesticide attempts fail, he seems dumber and dumber. But, he's your hero, and you have to wish him well. The assorted supporting characters are wonderful, particularly the suicidal #1 hitman, who befriends Bob; the clothes-conscious Jean, assistant to Marcel, the hit negotiator; and some of the other assassins, particularly the French beauty who has a hilarious moment when looking for gourmet chocolates in a quick-stop place. Another interesting moment occurs when the transvestite dwarf killer comes on to an overweight, underloved woman, who wants to make out while eating peanuts. This is a rather "touching" and poignant moment, almost out of place in this frantically paced novel. Give Fitzhugh credit, though--it's vastly entertaining, and you can forgive it's obvious flaws because it does make you laugh.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: A really great book
Review: i thought this was the best book i have ever read.It is really funny.Any one who thinks it isnt dosent have even the slightest bit of a sense of humor.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Quick and Fantastic Read
Review: Pest Control is a well written, fun adventure of Bob Dillon. Bob is an exterminator who is looking for work, after quitting his job to follow his dream of an all natural pest control. Bob applies to an ad in the paper for an exterminator and this is when the story shifts. The ad was for a professional killer - not a bug hunter.

The characters of this story draw you in and create a world that you feel apart of. Even the #1 killer has a hold on you. This story is crazy, out-there, and just enough of reality to keep you believing. A must read!

Rating: 1 stars
Summary: Another patchwork caper. Tiresome.
Review: Being ridiculous or crude is not the same as being funny.

I didn't care if any of the characters lived or died.

Life is too short for this when you can reread Elmore Leonard, Laurence Shames, or Lawrence Block.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: If All Books Were This Fun, There Would Be No Television
Review: Loved it. Laughed myself silly. A fun, twisted plot with awsome charecters. A must read!

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: Good fun lite reading
Review: I enjoyed this book. I especially liked the cover art ... I always liked stories about the ordinary person being put in an extraordinary situation. The premise of the story relies mainly on wild misunderstandings, which works well for this type of tale. What also works is that Bob Dillon is a guy that you like, a regular, hard-working joe who wants to have a better life for his normal family.
This is not a great epic, but it is a good short and fun read.

Rating: 3 stars
Summary: A Light Read
Review: New York City "It's Baghdad-on-the-subway." Bill Fitzhugh's Pest Control is set in the city of New York. Bob Dillon was unfortunately named this by his parents after the music star Bob Dylan. Bob is a down on his luck exterminator, who just recently quit his job after a dispute over the method used to eradicate houses of bugs. He lives in a lower-middle class apartment with his smart, sometimes fresh, daughter and his demanding wife. With a check-book balance of twelve dollars and forty-seven cents bills aren't being paid, and their daughter's college education is merely a dream.
But Bob has a dream, an all-natural pest control method. In Bob's "bug lab" of sorts, he breeds Assassin Bugs. These bugs are natural killers, bred to kill the common household cockroaches. In his desperate state, he answers an ad in the newspaper asking for an "exterminator" to make 50,000 a weekend. A few days later, he gets a response, and the true nature of this ad is revealed. They are looking for a hired assassin, not a person looking for bug extermination.
Pest Control is a humorous book and a light read. It incorporates a good storyline and a little education too. Along with the usual story come occasional detailed descriptions of specific species of bugs that are being used. This adds an extra dimension to the novel depending on your personal point of view. Unfortunately with this fortune comes some folly. These descriptions can become boring and an unwanted interruption to the flow of the story. Nearing the middle of the book I began to just read through these descriptions.
These descriptions were not the only flaw this book contains. Multiple stories come together eventually, but not until the near end of the book. The changing of the storylines seems random and just strikes a sour note to me. Very possibly this annoyance stems from my recent reading of Joseph Heller's Catch-22, which did the same thing with the story lines but to a very increased amount.
With the exceptions of a few flaws, Pest Control ... it is perfect when you're looking for something amusing that doesn't have loads of literary backing. I give it three out of five stars.


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