| Details | | Publication Date: | 1998-09-01 |
| Size | | Length: | 368 pages | | Height: | 7.5 in | | Width: | 5.5 in | | Thickness: | 1.2 in | | Weight: | 15.2 oz |
Publisher's Note
Paul Symon is an environmentalist who's out to make the world a better place, but he's overwhelmed by too much disjointed information, too much public apathy, too much self-serving talk and not enough action. Not to mention the opposition of greedy despoiler Jerry Landis, a successful venture capitalist who is dying of a rare disease that accelerates the aging process. Landis cares about only two things: making even more money, finding a way to arrest his medical condition. He'll go to any lengths to do either. That brings Landis and his fortune to the wild frontier of biotechnology, where his people are illegally experimenting with cross-species organ transplantation in California while breeding genetically altered primates at a secret site in the piney woods of south central Mississippi. Not only is Paul on the trail of this clandestine research, but there's also an eco-terrorist on the loose, bent on teaching hard lessons to people who are under the impression that the Earth and its creatures are theirs to destroy. These forces, together with 50,000 extra-large chacma baboons, collide in a explosion of laughter and wonder that Bill Fitzhugh's growing league of admirers is coming to recognize as his very own.
Industry Reviews
If there's anybody currently working hard at resuscitating the art of political incorrectness, it's Fitzhugh, first in Pest Control (LJ 3/1/97) and now in The Organ Grinders. Jerry Landis, the driving force behind the pharmaceutical concern Landaq, plots to use baboon organs to fill the demand for human hearts, lungs, and tissue. Aiding him is Arty, whose discovery of his own rapid-healing ability has led him (for a price) to the head of the organ donor line, leaving him at this point little more than a human stump in a motorized wheelchair. Pitted somewhat unevenly against them are Paul Symon and his wife, Georgette, the kind of people you always see at tables in supermarkets dutifully and ineffectively gathering signatures on petitions for good causes. These cartoonish players acting out their parts lead to some laugh-out-loud incidents that at times alarmingly mirror today's TV news. It all goes to prove that it's not easy for a satirist to stay on top of his game nowadays, when it's nearly impossible to separate fact from fiction. Suitable for most public libraries and apt to be fairly popular among audiences for uninhibited humor. Bob Lunn, Kansas City P.L., MO
Kakutani
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