Bradley Denton

An uproarious tale told in alternating voices follows the stories of a pet shop owner and a curmudgeon who find themselves on the run from police, terrorists, and a pizza chain mascot. One character, Philip Horkman is a happy man, the owner of a pet store called The Wine Shop, and on Sundays a referee for kids' soccer. The other, Jeffrey Peckerman is the sole sane person in a world filled with goddamned jerks and morons, and he's having a really bad day. The two of them are about to collide in a swiftly escalating series of events that will send them running for their lives, pursued by the police, soldiers, terrorists, subversives, bears, and a man dressed as Chuck E. Cheese.

"Jimmy Blackburn grows up in the Midwest believing the things that adults tell him. He questions his teachers and they lie to him. He questions his parents and his father beats him. He questions the world and it hurts him. And so Jimmy Blackburn becomes a killer. In this novel we meet many of Blackburn's twenty-one victims. They include law enforcers, writers, adulterers, auto mechanics, and other liars. This is an exceptional novel, at once riotously funny and searingly potent: a vision of America through the eyes of the central bogeyman of our culture."--Publisher.