Ebbe Roe Smith

From the writer of the darkly comedic film Falling Down comes the novel Pro Bono, the story of Adrien, a professional assassin and amateur chef who, in order to overcome a career-crippling crisis of conscience, volunteers to kill a few deserving souls free of charge. The client, Charles, formerly a take-life-by-the-balls thrill-seeker, is now a wheelchair-bound quadriplegic determined to take revenge against the three men he holds responsible for making him the man he is today. The targets: The driver of the Hummer who, while texting, crashed head-on into Charles’ hybrid; the doctor who failed to notice the hairline fracture in his vertebrae during a rushed post-accident exam, and the insurance company executive who found the loophole to deny his claim. The unlikely pair pursue their quarry in a custom Winnebago along with Jeanette, a nurse-practitioner with a past, Spike, an intellectually challenged, muscle-bound driver, and a hunting dog that Adrien is re-training as a service animal - a canine metaphor for the master who is himself questioning his purpose in life. Sharing some comedically-violent DNA with Mr. Smith’s iconic film, which starred Michael Douglas as an unemployed defense worker on a one-man rampage against the multi-cultural annoyances of 1990’s Los Angeles, Pro Bono is as outrageously funny as it is soulfully thought-provoking.