"Billy Summers is a man in a room with a gun. He’s a killer for hire and the best in the business. But he’ll do the job only if the target is a truly bad guy. And now Billy wants out. But first there is one last hit. Billy is among the best snipers in the world, a decorated Iraq war vet, a Houdini when it comes to vanishing after the job is done. So what could possibly go wrong?
How about everything."
In a few ways, Billy Summers
could be a cousin to Richard Stark’s Parker character. They are both somewhat
complicated people, who have difficulty with being with people. While they obviously
share different lives (Westlake/Stark never really explored Parker’s youth) and
pasts, seemly they do have similar, yet different moral codes when it comes to
killing people. Of course, Parker never has regrets –he will eliminate people
with little remorse, where Billy Summers seems to carry some of those kills
with him –which is probably why he starts writing about them (exercising
demons?), or more about his time in Iraq, while tooling away waiting for this
last take down to take place (which often reminded me of time traveler Jake
Epping from 11/22/63, who spends a significant amount of that book waiting to
catch up to history, the Kennedy assassination). Billy, like Parker, goes by several
names, has money stashed in various places, and has own version of Joe Sheer, a
man named Bucky who is Summers connection when a job needs to be done. But one
thing they do share is the dislike of being screwed out of money owed. Yes,
there is no honor among thieves, but for some strange reason, both hate the
idea of being screwed. And hell hath no fury. It’s also fairly obvious that
Billy suffers from PTSD, but can function fairly high on in that spectrum.
This helps in characterization a
lot, especially in the first quarter of the book, when Billy has to become
David Lockbridge, who takes up residence in a small neighborhood. As with
11/22/63, there is a prosaic pacing here, but this is where King has always
excelled at as writer, which sets him a few steps above other writers in horror
genre. We get cook-outs, endless games of Monopoly with the neighbors’ kids,
even a little casual sex with a worker in the office complex where Billy is set
up waiting for his shot, so to speak. It’s another look at King’s idealized
America of his youth –one that seemly no longer exists (at least in his mind). But
he likes creating these little worlds, with non-essential characters with
detailed backgrounds and sometimes difficult lives. And while it can come off
as bit pedestrian, it makes his books fuller, more realistic. Also, while some of
Billy’s stories of his youth seem anachronistically set in the 1950s or early 1960s
instead of the 1990’s, the book is clearly set in 2019 (in an NPR interview in
April 2020, he discussed having to change the story from taking place in 2020
to 2019 due to the COVID-19 pandemic). It's a bit distracting, because I'm almost sure what went down then has changed.
But the book does take left turn –though
not an unexpected one, especially for readers familiar with Westlake’s work.
However, his chance encounter with a young woman named Alice, who was dumped on
a road side after being roofied and raped, complicates Billy’s revenge plans. Now
he needs to take care of stranger, plus find out how he got screwed of his
money, and discover what a media mogul has do with what should've been a simple job -even if the $2 million seemed a bit hinkey for assassination of a very bad person.
Much like King’s earlier mystery trilogy series featuring Bill Hodges (Mr. Mercedes, Finders Keepers, End of Watch) there is a hint of the supernatural here. Bucky lives in the mountains of Colorado, near the valley where the Overlook Hotel used to be. In a small cabin on the land, where Billy is working out his terrors of Falluja, he notices a painting of topiary animals that he swears move around. It doesn’t lead to anything, but just a fun Easter Egg for his Constant Readers.
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