- Paperback: 352 pages
- Publisher: Arrow Books Ltd (2 Nov 2000)
- Language English
- ISBN-10: 0099410893
- ISBN-13: 978-0099410898
- Product Dimensions: 19.4 x 13 x 2.4 cm
- Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars See all reviews (1 customer review)
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: 920,818 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
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Product Description
Product Description
From the author of "Pest Control" comes a new comedy thriller, this time featuring an adman with a soft heart. When the adman's brother dies, he takes on his brother's persona - a priest in the Catholic Church - with hilarious consequences.
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First Sentence
CROUCHING BEHIND A TRUCK THAT WAS BUILT FORD tough, Dan Steele had but one simple question. Read the first page
Front Cover | Copyright | Excerpt | Back Cover
CROUCHING BEHIND A TRUCK THAT WAS BUILT FORD tough, Dan Steele had but one simple question. Read the first page
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Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
6 of 6 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
Lawyers, movie folk, management consultants and advertising people must be the most tempting targets for any satirist. They loom over the common herd, often deeply resented and yet somehow making themselves indispensable. And the herd allows them to scoop up far more than their fair share of the lush green stuff.
In "Cross Dressing", author Bill Fitzhugh starts with shallow, venal, treacherous advertising people squarely in his sights but plenty of other juicy targets get blasted before the book is through - real estate developers, Catholic aparatchiks and African warlords to name but a few.
The plot tests the limits of credibility pretty early on and soon decides to go flat out for preposterous. Great fun but too indignant to be funny. Many of the key characters are two-dimensional and/or stereotypes, yet engaging. And the whole cockeyed contraption is turbo-charged with a hard-edged compassion that makes it a really compelling read. There's lots of food for thought. Despite hearty swipes at the Church establishment, it's far from being anti-catholic. In fact it lionizes the true-to-the-teachings spirit of front-line Catholics.
Ultimately it's a tale of redemption that has more heart, soul and thinking than a rack full of airport thrillers. I'm still savouring it a month after finishing it.
Fans of Tom Sharp or Ben Elton will enjoy this one if they can get past the appalling cover, which betrays the spirit of the book disgracefully.
Most Helpful Customer Reviews on Amazon.com (beta)
Amazon.com:
31 reviews
16 of 19 people found the following review helpful
Fitzhugh Is On a Roll
14 Jun 2000
Format:Hardcover
After defying the sophomore slump with the excellent "The Organ Grinders," his follow-up to the hysterical "Pest Control," Bill Fitzhugh has established a bona fide winning streak with "Cross Dressing." It's mood inhabits a middle ground between the first two books--more emotional depth than "Pest," not as intense as "Grinders"--but is no less hilarious. His characters are, as always, instantly recognizable and relatable (if that's a word), and he accurately and fairly skewers both the media and the Catholic Church (and I know from where I speak--I'm a practicing Catholic who works in the media!). If you enjoy a very funny and (this is key with Fitzhugh) very VISUAL read, by all means read this book and everything else he's written or has yet to write.
8 of 9 people found the following review helpful
Bill...you're great
2 Sep 2000
Format:Hardcover
Pest Control was one of my favorite books....too funny. OK, now we have "Cross Dressing" as another favorite book. Brothers, church, prostitute, what a wonderful scenario. I love hysterical reads...Fitzhugh provides me with this. Laugh and love the characters. The rich vs. poor, sainted vs. slutty, moviedom vs. churchdom. Hey, I am having a wonderful time with Fitzhugh's book. It all makes for a wonderful ending.
6 of 7 people found the following review helpful
Another winner from Fitzhugh
27 Sep 2001
Format:Hardcover
This was Fitzhugh's first book, although it came out after Pest Control and Organ Grinders. That's because it was actually written as a screenplay when Bill was taking a writer's workshop in LA, I think, and he had to go back and do some rewriting to convert it into a book.
It's not quite as funny as the other two books, but then, it's still damn good as a first effort, and it shows Fitzhugh's great nascent talent which would come to full fruition in Pest Control and Organ Grinders.
Sister Peg and Dan Steele are interesting characters, and the obvious chemistry between two people who in normal life would be unlikely friends, is a nice touch. One reviewer objected to the occasional preachy passage and some off-the-cuff theologizing, but I didn't mind it. I've read a lot of theology myself, including many of the most important western writers on religion (such as Tillich, Niebuhr, Barth, Rosenzweig, Buber, Marcel, Berdyaef, and Bultmann, to give a partial list), and, notwithstanding the respect I have for the above writers, nobody can say their theology is any better than anybody else's, since there's no way to prove any of it, as much as I would like to believe otherwise.
But to get back to the book, Fitzhugh has another winner in this novel. I only give it four stars since the other two were so exceptional and deserved more like 8 stars. But if this were any other writer than Fitzhugh, it would rate five stars.
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