Pest Control

Rating:
Summary: Reading this book won't BUG you.
Review: I first decided to read this book,as I am in this field and was curious about what the author had done to the BUGMAN. The book starts out at a slither and quickly goes to a crawl and then emerges into a full blown rat race. The author sets up the jargon of the pest control and the other "professionals" industry to start the misunderstandings to hatch. Once this is established I found the book quite amusing and at times suspenseful. Watching the relationship build between the main character and his assassins made you feel there was a brotherly relationship as well as a professional admiration between the two. Overall this book was just as much fun as a major ROACH cleanout. I give this 7 "dead bugs".

Rating:
Summary: Hey now!!!
Review: It's got to be pretty tough to live up to the "Hiaasenesque" comparisons, however don't be surprised if Carl Hiaasen's next novel is said to compare favorably to "Pest Control" by Bill Fitzhugh! Fitzhugh has unquestionably raised the bar in the "zany humor, wickedly funny" genre. It made me want to run out and get a Chevy Van with a fiberglass bug (carabus nemoralis) on top.

Rating:
Summary: The funniest, interesting and fastest pace book I have read!
Review: The positive thinking ways of Bob Dillon and the typical life he leads for the average family man, is hilariously rocked when he quits his job as a "BUG OFF" employee! Unwittingly becomes tagged as The Exterminator when setting up his lifelong ambition as an "All Natural Pest Control" company. Hilarity strikes when international hitmen take Bob Dillon's title the wrong way and their "would-be" targets are dropping dead all over the place. Bob, unaware of what is going on and after a $1.1m payoff in plain packaging from the CIA and Marcel (a hitman broker!), is delivered to his crackpot landlord because Bob is not in, Bob still scratches around for food as his landlord will not let him have his deliveries until he pays up the $320 that he owes. Mary and Katy, Bob's wife and daughter respectively are never far from his heart and amidst all this confusion, all he wants is to be happy and successful. Can Mr Silverstein, an eccentric tycoon, impart knowledge and opportunity Bob's way? This is a book that must be read. This Fitzhugh guy must be life and soul of the Party! Great book Bill, hurry up and write another one!

Rating:
Summary: Take a walk on the wild and hilarious side!
Review: The reference to Carl Hiaasen on the book jacket lured me into buying Pest Control by Bill Fitzhugh. As Hiaasen is one of my favorite authors, I was curious to see if Fitzhugh could come close to his offbeat, demented humor. Well, I can't tell you how many times I laughed out loud while read- ing this book. It has already been passed on to one friend, and several others are waiting for it. The dialogue is so clever and I think it would make for a hilarious movie. Bill, I can't wait for your next book. Positively, Fourth Street.

Rating:
Summary: A laugh-out-loud thriller
Review: Laugh-out-loud funny is the best way to describe Pest Control, a comic thriller by Bill Fitzhugh. Bob Dillon is a New York exterminator who has lost his job. Seeing this as an opportunity to fulfill his dreams - opening an all-natural pest control company and buying a truck with a big fiberglass bug on top - Bob prints a flier that reads: "Professional Exterminator! Fifteen Years Experience! No Pest Left Alive!" One of Bob's fliers ends up in the hands of a man who hires professional killers. Impressed with Bob's "experience," he interviews Bob, who accepts the job without realizing he's been hired as an assassin. As the story progresses, the world's top assassins come into the picture, and the misunderstandings grow to riotous proportions. Pest Control is hilarious! Fitzhugh makes fun of popular culture and New York City and has a ball with the thriller genre. And as funny as the book is, it's also exciting. I laughed throughout the book and had a great time reading it.

Rating:
Summary: Bugs and laughter, what could be better?
Review: Take about 60 species of insects out of the more than a million that are available, mix them with a protagonist named Bob Dillon (and the sixty or so Bob Dylan references -- some hidden, some not), add some New York bashing, and a British transvestite dwarf assassin and what do you have? PEST CONTROL. Pardon me while I toot my own horn, but The Times in London said, (I swear they said this) "One of the funniest, most off-beat thrillers to hit the bookstalls in years... an action packed plot, stuffed with streetwise lines and larger than life characters... Fitzhugh does for New York what Carl Hiaasen did for Miami." That's true. I'm not allowed to make that sort of thing up. Elle magazine also said some terrific stuff about it (they used the word "hilarious") and Entertainment Weekly, well they gave me a B- (which is better than a poke in the eye with a sharp stick) -- but I think their objection was mostly that I made New York sound like the sort of place where lots of nutbars are running around with guns. As opposed to the way it REALLY is in New York. Which is not to say I don't like NYC, I love it. I've never even been mugged there, but lots of my friends have been. At any rate, the great folks at Murder Ink in New York love it as do the fine folks at Mysterious Books in Washington DC. So check it out. If you don't get a laugh I'll... well, I'll try to be funnier in my next novel. Oh! Don't forget to check out the feature in People Magazine coming in a few weeks. And believe me, no one is more surprised about all this than me.

Rating:
Summary: an exterminator is hired to kill a pest of a different sort
Review: PEST CONTROL Bill Fitzhugh Avon, Mar 1997, $20.00, 312 pp. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title

Rating:
Summary: Bug Puns Galore
Review: Lo and behold, there is something fun about bugs. Fitzhugh makes it so. The writing style is very likeable, giving this mystery-ish novel a light but slightly heart-stirring feel. The characters are well done, in a comical style, and the realistic touches add a little weight to the story.

My only criticism of this book is that I thought it would be laugh-out-loud funny. It IS humorous in the makes-you-smile-on-occasion sort of way, but I don't think I once laughed out loud. There are plenty of things about this book that are unplausible, as well, but you'll be fine with that as long as you dive in knowing that.

An entertaining first novel. Would probably read the second one if I happened upon it, but would not go out of my way to look for it.

Rating:
Summary: "I am here to deal death."
Review: After Bob Dillon is fired from his job at a pest control company, he decides to finally put his entomology degree to use. Bob has spent years developing the perfect 'assassin' insect by crossbreeding 8 species of Assassin bugs. With the perfect crossbreeding, Bob is convinced that he'll develop the ideal, natural (non-chemical) insect killer. There are several holes in Bob's plan and these become obvious as the plot develops. Bob's long-suffering wife, Mary is supportive, but when there's no money coming in, her patience runs out. Canvassing for employment, "Exterminator Bob" is mistakenly identified as a hit man, and soon Bob is up to his neck in the top ten assassins (the human variety), Columbian drug lords, CIA agents, and big money kill-contracts.

Meet the world's Top Ten assassins--including the burned out gambler, Klaus, the international beauty, Chantelle (whose trade mark is chocolate stuffed in the mouth of her victims), and Reginald, a particularly vicious and devious transvestite dwarf...

Author Bill Fitzhugh keeps the action rolling with even, light-handed talent. This could be an incredibly dark tale, but instead it's laugh-out loud funny, and part of the humour is found in Bob's naivete. He's so distracted by his financial and domestic problems, that he fails to see the bullets whizzing by his head. While the characters of the assassins are something you'd expect to see from a James Bond film, Fitzhugh still manages to make them highly original, and the tension continues until the last page. Fitzhugh also subtly blends observations of life in New York with various political statements. "Pest Control" is a delectable, light novel, and little is required from the reader--except amused enjoyment--in these 300 pages of pure delight--displacedhuman

Rating:
Summary: Delightfully absurd!
Review: If you can't stand silly, goofy, absurd fiction, then don't buy this book. If you do like that sort of thing (and I do), then your copy will probably be as worn and dogeared as mine.

The writing is a little terse at times, and occasionally a little choppy, but it sure is a fun read...even though I've read it several times, there are still parts that make me laugh out loud.