The Exterminators

October 3, 2011
Fitzhugh’s second comic thriller featuring bug-killer Bob Dillon (after 1996’s Pest Control) has more twists and turns than a cockroach eluding a slipper. Bob and his sidekick, assassin Klaus Müller, are working in Oregon on developing “a ‘green’ alternative to chemical pest control” in the form of a genetically engineered insect from the assassin bug family. Short of cash, they turn for funding to a murky agency with a venture capitalist front that’s really connected to the Department of Defense, whose representative wants their help “in the war on terror.” Bob and Klaus wind up in Hollywood, where they become targets of a Bolivian drug lord who puts a $20 million price tag on their heads. Along the way, the protagonist’s name, as in singer Bob Dylan, is good for a few yucks. Millennial religious fanatics, the film industry, the environment, both mainstream and right-wing media, all play a part in this delightful romp.

December 1, 2011
This sequel to 1997's Pest Control finds Bob Dillon, his wife and daughter, and Klaus, who was hired to kill Bob but became his best friend instead, now living under assumed identities in Oregon. All Bob wants to do is keep searching for the perfect insect-killing bug, but other people have other plans. The American government wants to adapt his work to military uses; a CIA agent wants to get his hands on Bob (and not for any good reasons, either); and there's still the matter of the original hit on Bob, six years earlier, which a certain Bolivian drug lord would very much like to see brought to completion. Fitzhugh's novels are decidedly offbeat comic thrillers, much like Tim Dorsey's Serge Storms series, and readers who enjoy either Dorsey or Carl Hiaasen should definitely be pointed in Fitzhugh's direction. With a plot that escalates from the funny to the borderline surreal, and characters who make us laugh pretty much whenever they open their mouths, the book is a real winner.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2011, American Library Association.)