Pest Control

Bob Dillon can't get a break. A down-on-his-luck exterminator, all he wants is his own truck with a big fiberglass bug on top -- and success with his radical new, environmentally friendly pest-killing technique. So Bob decides to advertise.

Unfortunately, one of his flyers falls into the wrong hands. Marcel, a shady Frenchman, needs an assassin to handle a million-dollar hit, and he figures that Bob Dillon is his man. Through no fault -- or participation -- of his own, this unwitting pest controller from Queens has become a major player in the dangerous world of contract murder.

And now Bob's running for his life through the wormiest sections of the Big Apple -- one step ahead of a Bolivian executioner, a homicidal transvestite dwarf, meatheaded CIA agents, cabbies packing serious heat ... and the world's number-one hit man, who might just turn out to be the best friend Bob's got.

User Ratings and Reviews

5 Stars Unique Idea, Brilliantly Done! Can't Wait to Read the Sequel!
Fitzhugh's debut novel Pest Control introduced the reading public to a new great author who proved through subsequent novels such as The Organ Grinders, Cross Dressing and Radio Activity to name but three, that he was neither a one hit wonder and that he can keep coming up with masterpiece quality surreal and unique ideas that will entertain until the final page. The next book to be published by Fitzhugh (assuming you are reading this review still when the latest published novel was Highway 61 Resurfaced) is apparently the sequel to Pest Control. Can't wait to get a copy of that!

In Pest Control Bob Dillon's aim is to become the ultimate exterminator, and fed up with the way his current employer is polluting the environment and only providing a short term band aid solution to cockroaches, silverfish and other pests he quits determined to start his own business. Only problem is Bob is in severe financial debt, behind on the rent and about to have his electricity cut off so his wife understandably is a bit annoyed with his hasty decision. Bob is undeterred though, knowing he is about to have a breakthrough with his environmentally sustainable cross bred Assassin Bugs that will be the next big thing, make him rich and more importantly allow him to afford a new truck with a really big fibreglass bug on top, maybe even two.

Meanwhile the world's top ranked assassin has turned down a hit on a target that really needs to be killed straight away so with other top ranked assassins not available in this short time frame underworld organiser of this sort of thing Marcel, reluctantly places an add in a New York newspaper. Professional Exterminator Needed ASAP $50K in a weekend. Drunk at the time Bob doesn't read between the lines, applies for the job then forgets all about until Marcel turns up on his doorstep. Marcel never figures out Bob is an insect exterminator and gives the terrified Bob the contract. When the target turns up dead, Bob's career as a highly paid hitman is underway. Unbeknownst to Bob, through coincidental deaths he is fast climbing the ranking of the best hitman for hire. It is not long before the CIA want to employ him, and one of his 'victim's' brothers puts a record price on Bob's head that brings the world's top assassins out of the wood work and after him.

This is one of the best books I have read in a long while. Also check out Fitzhugh's other work. If you like this sort of thing and want to read similar authors also check out Dave Barry's fiction novels or Carl Hiaasen as well.

5 Stars Just what I needed!
Not going to summarize the plot of this work, the other reviews do an excellent job of covering that aspect.

I was going through a dark time and needed something to make me laugh. Picked this book up at a used bookstore and it did the trick. I found myself laughing uproarously out loud several times and I stayed up late to finish it.

("Tick Tock" by Dean Koontz mixes horror and humor in a similar manner. I would recommend it as well.) Wish there was a website list of such works.

4 Stars review of Pest Control
I am a fan of Fitzhugh, so the reader will gather that I go for zany humor. this is one of his best!

5 Stars "I laughed until my head fell off" -- Barzan Ibrahim
If Robert Ludlum and Douglas Adams had wild homosexual monkey love (not that there's anything wrong with that) with each other before their individual demises, their bastard love child would have been Bill Fitzhugh.

More succinctly, Fitzhugh's novel Pest Control takes the best thriller elements of Ludlum's memory-addled spies and Adam's irreverent humo(u)r and sensibilities and hybrids them (to verb a noun) like so many assassin bugs in the Bugarariums of protagonist Bob Dillon.

In a world where the top 5 assassins know their individual ranks, and where there are still "exterminations" that need doing, hapless Dillon answers a classified ad in a drunken stupor. An ad to kill a man.

When that man dies, Bob's to blame, and everyone from a transvestite dwarf to the CIA gunning for him.

It's a fast page-turner, with at least one chuckle, smile or groaner on every page. Fortunately, the groaners are outnumbered by the smiles and chuckles at least 3-to-1.

Characters are all unique, in some cases (ok, all cases) bizarrely so, as in the case of Bob's daughter's best friend's mother, who has a circus fetish involving dwarfs, bags of peanuts, and... well, really, isn't that enough?

You have to come into this book with a sense of humor. Perhaps even an advanced sense of humor. Curmudgeons will flee this book faster than an cockroach from a flashlight.

2 Stars Sorta like Monty Python...minus the humor
PEST CONTROL was my first book by Mr. Fitzhugh and 30 pages into it I decided it will probably be my last. The plot outline--ordinary Joe too fixated on his entomological obsession to notice he's been accidentally mistaken for an international assassin--is an ingeniously set stage ripe for grand comedy. Alas, the curtain never rises above knee level. The central events & conversations which must create the grand illusion on which the story hinges are unimaginative, unconvincing, and alas, not very funny. The story goes from there into an adolescent action slapstick, full of too many hastily-created throwaway characters that mostly showcase the author's lack of descriptive power.

If ever a story cried out for an editor this it it. His awful similes ("Their hearts were harder than trying to open an oyster with a wet bus ticket.") only look good compared to the juvenile imagination which chases the increasingly implausible plot into an oddly tedious crescendo of casual New York slaughter. The final resolution tries to leap too many logical potholes to survive the crossing into epilogue intact. The utter unreality of Fitzhugh's cartoonish world could have been a comedic asset if it were consistent, but it doesn't just migrate as the pages wear on, it gallops away, leaving this reader wondering by the end why he didn't quit on page 30.

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