- Hardcover: 288 pages
- Publisher: Simon & Schuster (Mar 12 1999)
- Language: English
- ISBN-10: 0684862131
- ISBN-13: 978-0684862132
- Product Dimensions: 24.5 x 16.8 x 2.5 cm
- Shipping Weight: 549 g
- Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars See all reviews (14 customer reviews)
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Product Details |
Product Description
From Publishers Weekly
In a Minnesota peopled by Salem-smoking, cake-baking women and their disappointing, truant men, Hautman's faded rose Barbaraannette kills time and stakes her hopes on daily Powerball. The dumbest thing that Barbaraannette ever did was to marry her two-timing high school sweetheart Bobby Quinn?but the second dumbest is to offer up a hefty chunk of the $9-million lotto jackpot she's just won as a reward for his safe return. Missing for six years, having left only a broken-down Jeep and some abandoned fishing gear in his wake, Bobby Quinn has changed his name to Steele and is shacked up in Tucson with an untrustworthy ladyfriend named Phlox. When Barbaraannette's ship comes in, the couple see an opportunity for an easy swindle. They're not alone in this: friends of Bobby's whom he once gypped, professional crooks, extortionists and leeches of all kinds circle in on Barbaraannette's cash. And Barbaraannette 's protective sisters and senile mother will all butt in to protect her from herself. Hautman (Short Money) brings these eccentrics to life in a swift-paced, none-too-serious but colorful story with lots of entertainment potential.
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
From Library Journal
Ever wonder what a person would do for a million dollars? Barbarannette Quinn finds out in spades when she wins over $80 million in the Minnesota lottery and announces on Eyewitness News that she is offering a cool million for the safe return of her husband, Robert, who left six years earlier on a fishing trip from which he never returned. This announcement inspires as unrepentant a group of kooks as ever ran rampant through a Minnesota snow bank. Besides every Cadillac dealer in Minnesota (and two from Wisconsin), there's the young con artist who writes letters to celebrities soliciting money, the local college professor who gets a taste of murder and likes it, and Robert's current girlfriend, who says she'd give up oxygen for a million dollars. Barbarannette's travails make a riotous story of good luck, bad timing, and redemption in the best tradition of Donald Westlake. Hautman is also the author of Ring Game (LJ 10/1/97) and Mortal Nuts (LJ 5/1/96). Highly recommended.AThomas L. Kilpatrick, Southern Illinois Univ. Lib., Carbondale
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
Inside This Book
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First Sentence
When Barbaraannette Quinn heard the Powerball numbers come over the radio she was busy decorating a Cowboy Cake for her niece, spelling out "Brittany" in pink script beneath a peanut-butter-frosting rendering of a cowboy hat. Read the first page
Front Cover | Copyright | Excerpt | Back Cover
When Barbaraannette Quinn heard the Powerball numbers come over the radio she was busy decorating a Cowboy Cake for her niece, spelling out "Brittany" in pink script beneath a peanut-butter-frosting rendering of a cowboy hat. Read the first page
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Most helpful customer reviews
3.0 out of 5 stars
The professor has a mean streak,
By Dave Schwinghammer "Dave Schwinghammer" (Little Falls, Minnesota USA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)
This review is from: Mrs. Million (Hardcover)
Sam O'Gara appears in most of Hautman's novels. In this one he gets a bare mention. He's the father of Barbaraannette Quinn, who wins the lottery and decides to spend a million of it trying to win her husband Bobby back. He absconded six years before and she's never gotten over the good-looking devil.Bobby, along with his girlfriend, Phlox, sees her offer on TV. They decide to claim the reward and then split, which strains credulity because people are looking for Bobby in Cold Rock, Minnesota. You see, before he left, he conned these two guys out of money to start a dude ranch, and he runs into them as soon as he sets foot in Cold Rock. Suddenly everybody wants the million dollars and Bobby changes hands more often than the Hope diamond. There are a lot of quirky characters in MRS. MILLION, but probably the most interesting one is the college professor, Andre Gideon, who just happens to be in the right place (or wrong, depending upon how you look at it). He's more interested in JJ Morrow, another con man, who sends letters to celebrities to mooch money off of them. Gideon is unique because Hautman is working against type. Gideon looks about as violent as Shirley Temple, but he's got a mean streak as long as the English Chunnel. There's a lot of internal monologue in this novel, which slows down the pace, but it speeds up when Barbaraanette collects the million in cash from her marathon-running banker, who just happens to have loved her forever. The funniest part is how often the money changes hands. You'll start counting heads when the money disappears. Everybody seems to be accounted for. The eventual resolution is sidesplitting.
3.0 out of 5 stars
Decent, But He's Done Better,
By
This review is from: Mrs. Million (Paperback)
As in his previous books, Drawing Dead and the excellent The Mortal Nuts, Hautman brings Carl Hiassan's tradition of wild and wacky characters to small-town Minnesota. When a 30ish single woman wins the Powerball lottery, she offers $1,000,000 for the return of her missing no-good husband, who disappeared six years ago. This is catalyst for shady shenanigans as he and his girlfriend head back to collect the money. Of course there are other people seeking to claim the reward themselves, etc... Everything ends true to formula, and it doesn't have quite the sharp bite that his other books do.
5.0 out of 5 stars
Quirky, lighthearted, and very entertaining,
By
This review is from: Mrs. Million (Hardcover)
If you've read your way through Carl Hiaissen, Elmore Leonard, and James W. Hall but haven't discovered Pete Hautman, "Mrs. Million" is a great place to start. Reviewers who were expecting big action or complex plotting in this book were probably disappointed, but only because they missed the point. Hautman's work is very easy to escape into because it IS odd-ball. It doesn't have to make sense!The characters in this book, like in those in "Short Money," are very offbeat, but immensely likeable. Except for the villains, of course, who are equally offbeat but easy to despise. But like Hiaissen's villains, they always get what's coming to them. I've only read two of Hautman's books, but I'm using an Amazon gift certificate to stock up (and then fortify my local library). Keep up the good work, Mr. Hautman.
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