Hit Man - Softcover

Block, Lawrence

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0752825925 ISBN 13: 9780752825922

Publisher: Orion (an Imprint of The Orion Publishing Group Ltd ), 2001

Synopsis

Keller is a hit man who finds his life turned upside down when a job means more than the one allotted death...

Keller is an assassin - he is paid by the job and works for a mysterious man who nominates hits and passes on commissions from elsewhere. Keller goes in, does the job, gets out: usually at a few hours' notice. Often Keller's work takes him out of New York to other cities, to pretty provincial towns that almost tempt him into moving to the woods and the lake shores . . . Almost, but not quite.

But then a job goes wrong in a way Keller has never imagined and it leaves him with a big problem. Finding himself with an orphan on his hands, Keller's job begins to interfere with his carefully guarded life.

And once you let someone in to your life, they tend to want to know what you do when you're away. And killing for a living, lucrative though it is, just doesn't find favour with some folks.

About this title

Review

A man known only as Keller is thinking about Samuel Johnson's famous quote that "'patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel'... If you looked at it objectively, he had to admit, then he was probably a scoundrel himself. He didn't feel much like a scoundrel. He felt like your basic New York single guy, living alone, eating out or bringing home takeout, schlepping his wash to the Laundromat, doing the Times crossword with his morning coffee.... There were eight million stories in the naked city, most of them not very interesting, and his was one of them. Except that every once in a while he got a phone call from a man in White Plains. And packed a bag and caught a plane and killed somebody. Hard to argue the point. Man behaves like that, he's a scoundrel. Case closed." But Lawrence Block is such a delightfully subtle writer, one of the true masters of the mystery genre, that the case is far from closed. In this beautifully linked collection of short stories, we gradually put together such a complete picture of Keller that we don't so much forgive him his occupation as consider it just one more part of his humanity. After watching Keller take on cases that baffle and anger him into actions that fellow members of his hit-man union might well call unprofessional, we're eager to join him as he goes through a spectacularly unsuccessful analysis and gets fooled by a devious intelligence agent. We miss the dog he acquires and loses, along with its attractive walker. Like Richard Stark's Parker, Keller makes us think the unthinkable about criminals: that they might be the guys next door--or even us, under different pressures. For a small selection of the many Blocks in paperback, try Coward's Kiss, A Long Line of Dead Men, The Sins of the Fathers, Such Men Are Dangerous and especially When the Sacred Ginmill Closes.

Review

Ruthless but flawed, Keller is a great invention, and his hard-boiled amorality has both poignancy and grace (GUARDIAN)

One of the surest, most distinctive voices in American fiction (Martin Cruz Smith)

The angst-ridden and introspective Keller is a terrific creation who shouldn't be shunned because of his dark profession (IRISH INDEPENDENT)

Block is a flat-out entertainer (DAILY TELEGRAPH)

One of the best ever. Block was, and remains, a pioneer (Harlan Coben)

Block is not only one of the great technicians of the form; with this book he reveals himself as a writer capable of ripping your moral compass right out of your chest, smashing it to pieces on your forehead, and then leaving you to glue it back together. And he does it all so nicely, too (INDEPENDENT)

Absolutely riveting ... Block is terrific (WASHINGTON POST)

Edition details

• Publisher: Orion (an Imprint of The Orion Publishing Group Ltd )
• Publication date: 2001
• ISBN 10: 0752825925
• ISBN 13: 9780752825922
• Binding: Paperback
• Language: English
• Number of pages: 384