A Father's Kisses
A Novel
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- $11.99
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- $11.99
Publisher Description
A ridiculously funny novel about a devoted single dad who becomes an international hit man from the author of A Mother’s Kisses
After losing his job as a poultry distributor, William Binny spends his mornings at the local diner polishing off a cheap breakfast and perusing the local paper. A widower with an 11-year-old daughter who could pass for 14, Binny has plenty of reasons to worry about the future. Salvation soon walks through the diner doors, however, in the form of a redheaded Englishman named Valentine Peabody.
Peabody makes an unlikely proposition: He will pay Binny thousands of dollars to kill the enemies of his mysterious billionaire boss. The victims are bad men guilty of myriad crimes, but does Binny have what it takes to commit murder? For the sake of his daughter’s future, he is willing to find out. When his first few assignments do not go as planned, however, Binny starts to wonder if there is more to his new job than meets the eye. The shocking truth that he eventually uncovers brings this rollicking thrill ride to a conclusion so dramatic, hilarious, tender, and absurd it could only have been imagined by author Bruce Jay Friedman.
This ebook features an illustrated biography of Bruce Jay Friedman including rare photos from the author’s personal collection.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Middle American levelheadedness finds a hilarious new spokesman in William Binny, whose boredom and love for his daughter transform him from unemployed poultry worker into international hit man. Friedman's witty, beguiling slapstick is set--perhaps in central Arkansas--in a town "voted `America's Third Friendliest City' by a spinoff of Forbes." Widower Binny, whose job was given away while he was trying to find himself on vacation in Czechoslovakia, spends his days minding the timer at the local tanning salon and breakfasting leisurely at Ed Bivens's diner, where he first meets Valentine Peabody, a standoffish, wealthy Brit visiting from Karachi. With his job gone, his wife dead and his best friend recently killed in an auto accident, Binny is lonely, bored, depressed and worried about providing for his 11-year-old daughter, Lettie. Already hoping to make Peabody his new friend, Binny gets more than he bargains for when Peabody offers to make him rich for killing the enemies of Peabody's mysterious billionaire employer. Friedman (A Mother's Kisses; The Lonely Guy's Book of Life, etc.) tells his story in the frank, editorializing voice of Binny, who, for all his foibles, is the novel's most stable character. Amid wacky plot twists, Binny mouths off about bigotry, political correctness, male bonding, fatherhood, showbiz and old-fashioned American family values, among other topics, in crisp prose imbued with Friedman's odd, distinctive comic sensibility. Author tour.
