April 16, 2024
The Pay Day:
A Zany Sequel to the Best-Seller Hucksterville
Ron Elgin
Aviva Publishing (2024)
ISBN: 978-1636183121
Zany Sequel Brings Back Quirky Characters in Advertising Agency
Ron Elgin’s The Pay Day reintroduces us to Megan Santucci, an advertising whiz who overcame alcoholism and homelessness to launch a successful ad campaign in Elgin’s earlier best-seller, Hucksterville. Not only is Megan back in this book, but so are most of the zany characters we met in the first book. Lotta Foreskin is now the head of Tight Fit Athletics after the mysterious death of her brother Max by crocodile. While Detective Richard Hard investigates Max’s death, Lotta convinces Megan to come back to Tight Fit Athletics and form her own advertising agency, which she names Hucksterville, to help Tight Fit advance in the athletics business, including coming out with a new shoe line. Soon all the old team is back together, including Carmen and her muscle-bound boyfriend Meat, Megan’s best friend Helen, Stu Pedd, Possibly Peter (who has a bad case of Tourette’s), and The Herman—two creative geniuses named Herman who are brothers from different mothers.
But be prepared also to meet several new characters, including Mr. Dudley, who calls himself Mr. Smedley to keep his identity secret. He has a great idea for a new product—noise-making devices to install in electric cars so pedestrians and animals aren’t killed by the quiet cars sneaking up on them. Megan comes to believe this idea, crazy as it sounds, is marketable in other vehicles and soon gets the rest of the ad team on board until both the product and ads are launched.
But it’s not all work, work, work for Megan and her ad agency as they transform into international superstars in the advertising world. At least a few characters take out some time for fun. The Herman, for example, visit London, England, so Herman Also can compete in the International Crepitation Contest. For you less-sophisticated readers, that’s a farting contest. The Herman are not known for their good hygiene, but that’s no problem when eating beans and cabbage can lead to some desired smelly and powerful results.
Scene after scene of the novel is filled with witty dialogue, absurd situations, and crazy plans that actually work. Ad agencies spy on each other. A sleezy mattress store owner buys an interstellar bank. Ima Vailable entertains guests in the reception room, or at least tries to. Ubu the Gorilla protects Lotta Foreskin and her office, which resembles a campground in Madagascar. Miss Kitty, former madam, provides temporary employee services. Billie/Bill considers wearing a uniform so she/he won’t have to decide which gender to dress as each day. Herman Also learns that pants and trousers aren’t the same things in the UK as in the US. And Megan discovers there are other kinds of addictions besides substance abuse.
The Pay Day will have you roaring out loud. It might even have you pissing your pants—but that’s nothing worse than what The Herman would do. It will have you thinking “This would never happen in real life,” and yet Ron Elgin, himself the co-founder of the incredibly successful Pacific Northwest ad agency Elgin-Syferd, writes largely from personal experience, as all the ad-speak in the book testifies.
If you’re looking for wit like Vonnegut’s, quirkiness like in a Woody Allen movie, and office shenanigans that would make Michael Scott blush, then The Pay Day is the book for you. Trust me; you’ll never look at advertising in the same way again.
For more information about Ron Elgin and The Pay Day, visit Amazon.
— Tyler R. Tichelaar, PhD and award-winning author of Odin’s Eye: A Marquette Time Travel Novel
