CROSS DRESSING

A deft, funny, caper novel, incorporating (1) gleefully savage attacks on the Church, the advertising industry, and the charity industry, (2) occasionally heartfelt characters, and (3) an inspired marketing gimmick.

While often compared to Carl Hiassen, Fitzhugh (Pest Control, 1997, etc.) is fast creating his own dark and funny category. In this third outing, amoral adman Dan Steele, up to his neck in debt and smug consumerism, is fish-out-of-watered when he steals the best idea of his career (`More is more`) from an unstable copywriter, just as Dan's twin brother Michael, an excommunicated do-gooder priest, returns from Africa, ill. Registered at the hospital as “Dan” for insurance coverage, Michael succumbs to tetanus, and, on the run from legal problems, insurance investigators, and his now-homicidal ex-colleague, Dan dons Michael's collar. As Father Michael, Dan goes to work at Sister Peg's Care Center, where he falls for Peg (fortunately, no more a nun than he is a priest). Predictably, Dan finds redemption caring for others, and he'll obviously save the financially teetering facility with his advertising savvy. Fitzhugh commits sins of inclusion as well: there are two hookers with hearts of gold; no fewer than four gunmen converging for the climax; and, not content to harpoon his satirical targets, Fitzhugh levels them with assault weapons, then jumps up and down on their heads. There's always a bit too much of everything, but the author's having so much fun that we do, too. To top it off, he claims ((has, we should say) a product placement deal—the first ever for a novel—with Seagram's, and you can hear him chortling through the ad-speak whenever Dan is glowingly described sipping Scotch. Tut-tutting critics, sure to take him to task, guarantee an already likely bestseller an even higher profile.

Smart, fast and funny. Fitzhugh is a dangerous man.