Pest Control
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5.0 • 1 Rating
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- $4.99
Publisher Description
All Bob Dillon ever wanted was a truck with a big fiberglass bug on the roof. All he had to do was survive a half dozen assassination attempts, pull a ten million dollar con on a Bolivian drug lord, and then fall off the face of the earth with his family and his new best friend, Klaus. Six years later, they've surfaced in Oregon where they are continuing to work on an all-natural means of pest control.
Bob and Klaus are using advanced gene sequencers to consolidate the perfect insectkilling traits into one deadly bug. All this serious DNA tampering is expensive and they're running low on funds. But who will invest? The interested outfit turns out to be a front for an agency of the Department of Defense, and they want to enlist Bob, Klaus, and the bugs in the War on Terror.
Things go swimmingly until that Bolivian drug lord discovers he was conned: he offers twenty million to whomever kills Bob and Klaus. Some of the world's best assassins descend on Hollywood and the weirdness reaches an apocalyptic level...
Reviews for the Assassin Bugs series
'One of the funniest, most off-beat thrillers... an action-packed plot stuffed with streetwise lines and larger than life characters.' The Times
'Wild and clever fun.' Carl Hiaasen
'Does for beetles what Jurassic Park did for dinosaurs… within its fascinating pages is a cast of creepy crawlies whose murderous methods put human predators to shame. Perfect holiday reading.' Liverpool Daily Post
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
This debut novel, published in Britain in 1994, hinges on a delightfully buggy idea that takes full comic advantage of New York City. Bob Dillon, an unemployed pest control expert, faxes a resume in response to a carefully coded advertisement for a hired killer-"Gone private with lethal new concept!" reads Bob's exuberant pitch. Voila! He's mistaken for a top assassin. When assorted personages start dying and their demises are laid at Bob's door, the CIA gets involved. A price is put on Bob's head, luring every top-rated killer-for-hire in the world to the Big Apple, which is depicted as infinitely more dangerous than merely cold-blooded assassins. In a prime example of the book's major flaw, however, this humorous concept is set up long before it's knocked down and is then discarded far too quickly for a gruesome, bug-infested finale. Fitzhugh can't settle on a consistent attitude to his over-the-top material. Arch quotations from rock songs rub up against Bob's marital problems and the pure Hollywood fantasy of the world's top assassin, who, while tracking Bob, yearns only for a normal, middle-class family life. The uncertain pacing and tone render this comic thriller a bumpy read, but its nifty premise makes it just right for a high-concept film, which is no doubt why movie rights have been sold to Warner Brothers' Spring Creek Productions for million.
