From Publishers Weekly
A smarmy overachiever's machinations power this sly sendup of smalltown politics and society shenanigans. D. William Aitchbone has schemed, he's planned, he's out-machiavellied Machiavelli, but he has not yet managed to get himself elected mayor of Tuttwyler, Ohio. Even more vexing, he cannot convince Howie Dornick--Aitchbone's half-brother-in-law, city maintenance engineer and town black sheep--to paint the eyesore of a home Howie inherited from his mother. Bill wants "Squaw Days," Tuttwyler's upcoming festival, to be the best in town history so he can ride to the mayor's seat on a groundswell of popularity. If Howie will just paint his house, if the vice-president of the U.S. will agree to ride in the parade and if Bill can keep the other town councilors under his thumb, all will be well--particularly if he makes the money he expects when he sells his late uncle's farm to developers. Things seem to be going according to plan when Howie finally does agree to paint his house, but the strange green color he uses horrifies the town nearly as much as it delights Hugh Harbinger, a depressed New York "renowned genius of color" with a talent for marketing and development. Then a strange grave is uncovered on Aitchbone's developable property, and Howie and his honey, librarian Katherine Hardihood, see their way clear to make Aitchbone's life a living hell. Though moments of overly broad humor and a number of stock characters keep this clever follow-up to Levandoski's well-received first novel (Going to Chicago) from soaring, sound plotting and zippy pacing lead to a satisfying conclusion. (Apr.)
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.
From Kirkus Reviews
A hideous home-brewed housepaint has unpredictable consequences for the daft residents of a small Ohio town thats preparing for its annual tourist event, in this second midwestern gothic from Levandoski (Going to Chicago, 1997). Lawyer D. William Aitchbone, aspiring Republican power-broker of tiny Tuttwyler, Ohio, will let nothing stop him from making this summer's Squaw Days festival the best ever. As the festival's new chairman, Aitchbone (who sees the festival as a launching pad for his political career) is yanking every string he can grab to have the US vice president ride in the annual parade and possibly even judge the pie-eating and tobacco-spitting contests. But should a vice president have to see the drab, unpainted two-story clapboard house of Howard Dornick, the illegitimate son of the town's only war hero? Aitchbone decides to threaten Dornick, the city's maintenance man, with job privatization; as a result, Dornick buys the cheapest paint he can find, mixes in assorted household cleaning fluids, lubricating oils and antifreeze, and slathers on an eye-searing shade of green that contrasts violently with the prim, pearly white Victorians facing the town square. Levandoski's deliberately trite metaphor for the shock of the new has residual effects: spinster librarian Katherine Hardihood falls in love with Dornick and, during a visit to the festival (a tacky sham that celebrates the murder of an Indian princess and her child by Tuttwylers founding fathers, and the princess's ghostly forgiveness of the crime), clinically depressed New York commercial color-consultant Hugh Harbinger sees gold in what he trademarks as Serendipity Green. From here on, Levandoski takes his farce down paths less familiarand less assured. We learn that the town's conflicted personalities are linked to a motormouth Iranian psychiatrist, Pirooz Aram; that a melodramatic secret lurks in a forgotten grave; and that an assassin lurks among the parades cheering sightseers. A funny, if formulaic, send-up of heartland hypocrisy slowly ripens into a more interesting but less coherent observation of America's failure to slow down and smell the roses, whatever color they may be.-- Copyright © 2000 Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.
Review
Rob Levandoski's hilarious swipe at small-town narrow-mindedness is the type of comic novel in which the characters might as well wear T-shirts saying "Two-Dimensional," the type that stockpiles events as if they were blasts of helium blown into a balloon that's denied an explosive final pop...The laughs may be easy, but they're also very very funny...Just as Harbinger makes Serendipity Green the new black, so Levandoski makes Serendipity Green a stylish new black comedy. --David Finkle, The New York Times Book Review
About the Author
Rob Levandoski lives on his family's farm in Hinckley, Ohio. He is a veteran writer and book critic. His first novel, Going to Chicago, was published by The Permanent Press in 1997.
