Mrs. Million [Hardcover]

Pete Hautman (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: March 12, 1999

Everybody loves somebody sometime. Everybody falls in love somehow. But when you mix love with a million dollars, somebody's going to get hurt.

Barbaraannette Quinn loved her husband, Bobby, right up until the day he got in his Jeep, left their home in Cold Rock, Minnesota, and never returned. She's waited six years for him either to turn up dead or walk through her door with a crooked smile and a pocketful of lies.

Everything changes when Barbaraannette wins the lottery.

Bobby Quinn is alive, well, and watching TV when Barbaraannette suddenly appears on-screen waving a snapshot of him and offering a million dollars to anyone who can find her runaway husband and drag him back to Cold Rock. Bobby and his girlfriend, Phlox, decide that she will turn him in, collect the million bucks, and then they'll both hightail it back to Arizona to live happily ever after.

Unfortunately, everybody wants a piece of Bobby -- including a pair of hulking good ole boys, who figure Bobby owes them, and a sociopathic pretty-boy fresh out of St. Cloud Correctional, who notices that Barbaraannette's offer doesn't require that Bobby arrive alive. Toss in a shy, marathon-running banker, a lovestruck humanities professor, and Barbaraannette's kleptomaniac mother, and things start getting a little hot in Cold Rock.

"I've really started something, haven't I?" Barbaraannette says. What she's started is a crackpot criminal conspiracy the likes of which you've never seen. Mrs. Million is Pete Hautman's wildest and funniest work yet, a tale certain to reach the first rank of criminal comedies.

Editorial Reviews

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.

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.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 288 pages
• Publisher: Simon & Schuster; 1st edition (March 12, 1999)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0684832437
• ISBN-13: 978-0684832432
• Product Dimensions: 9.4 x 6.3 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 12 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (15 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #4,249,651 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Okay, here's some miscellaneous personal info. I'll try to be as brief as possible. I was born in 1952 in Berkeley, California, or so I am told (I don't really remember). At age five I moved to St. Louis Park, Minnesota where I went to Cedar Manor Elementary School (also the alma mater of Al Franken and the Coen brothers, and no, they are not close personal friends of mine) and eventually graduated honor-free from St. Louis Park High School. This is so tedious. Why do you keep reading? For the next seven years I attended the Minneapolis College of Art and Design and the University of Minnesota. Contrary to recent news reports, I did not graduate from either institution. After college I worked various jobs for which I was ill-suited, including sign painter, graphic artist, marketing executive, pineapple slicer, etc. Eventually, having exhausted other options, I decided to write. My first novel, Drawing Dead, was published in 1993. Today, I live with mystery writer and poet Mary Logue in Golden Valley, Minnesota and Stockholm, Wisconsin. We have two small dogs (are you still reading?) named Rene and Jacques. There you have it. Fifty-plus years compressed into a few short paragraphs. Feel free to copy and paste for your book report, but don't tell anybody I suggested it. Need to know more? Check out the FAQs page on my website at http://www.petehautman.com.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Quirky, lighthearted, and very entertaining, September 6, 2000

By 

D. Smith (Winchester, VA United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

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.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars wacky, July 29, 2000

By 

Pamela Stone - See all my reviews

This review is from: Mrs. Million (Paperback)

The first few pages drew me into this book very quickly. The cast of quirky characters makes this a funny story. Barbarannette, (nicknamed Barbie) whose husband, Bobby Quinn, had run off 6 years ago. Now that Barbie has won the lottery and her winnings totaled 8.9 million dollars. She decides to put up a million dollars reward for the safe return of her husband Bobby. Big mistake. At the same time that Barbie was on TV putting up the reward, Bobby is sitting in Tucson AZ watching TV with his girl friend. They decide to pack their bags and go claim the reward for themselves. There are 2 other people who also want the money, Bobby's greedy girlfriend and a crazy bounty hunter. The book goes through their misadventures, in the attempt to try and claim the million dollars for themselves. Barbie's family is a wee bit wacky but they have Barbie's best interest at heart. Be prepared for a surprise end. I found it to be a well, written, lighthearted read that held my attention. A good read for a lazy day.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Hilarious entertainment. Don' miss it!, June 11, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: Mrs. Million (Hardcover)

This was the first time I've read Peter Hautman, but it certainly won't be the last. Very funny and entertaining characters make this a must read for anyone who wants a good laugh. Fans of Mr. Hautman should definitely check out all books written by Peter Lefcourt. I couldn't help from noticing the similarities in style between the two authors. Both are very funny and write with tongue firmly planted in cheek.