BILLY SUMMERS by Stephen King

Stephen King is a master of suspense, and this book exudes it, despite its overly familiar plot devices—a book within a book and a hired assassin planning to retire after one last lucrative hit.  King is obviously aware of the triteness of his subject matter, even going so far as to describe the one-last-hit-job plot as its own subgenre of noir fiction.  Still, he pulls this novel off as seemingly as effortlessly as ever, with characters that I enjoyed getting to know over the course of 500+ pages and only the barest hint of the supernatural.  Billy Summers is the stereotypical hit man in question who goes through aliases and disguises at a lickety-split pace and poses as a writer.  The book-within-a book is Billy’s autobiography, but I rushed through Billy’s backstory in order to return to his current situation in which he bonds with neighbors, especially children, agonizing over how disappointed they are going to be when they find out his vocation.  The hit in question takes place relatively early in the novel, but Billy suspects that his usual disappearing act after a hit is actually going to be more final.  In other words, this will be his final hit, because his employers will ensure that he doesn’t live to do another.  What’s really nifty about this book, though, is that Billy’s post-hit life takes an unforeseen trajectory, due to a good Samaritan act on his part.  Such humanity is not something we would expect of a hitman, but Billy kills only bad guys, of course, although the length of his victim list leaves Billy with no doubt that he, too, is a bad guy.