Sure, some of it’s cheesy, some of it even on-the-nose, but none of it ever comes across like a cover for him. Who we meet, where we go, and how we get there is all vintage King through and through. (Hint, hint, Constant Readers.) Again, it’s all muscle memory to him, which is why Billy Summers reads like a sum of all his strengths. When he’s not running and gunning with bullets and brawn, he’s delectably building out his world - even when he’s exploring familiar locales. If anything, this may be King’s most actionable novel in the last decade. Rest assured, that’s not to say the action takes backseat.

Without spoiling much, there’s a confessional tone here that suggests King is wrestling with the immortal currency of his own written word - and it’s a palpable feeling, to say the least. It’s in these passages that King snipes our hearts, namely because he’s writing from his own. Not so much the story within the story, but the feelings and emotions elicited from the act of writing itself. Because really, the hit becomes secondary to the pathos that King mines from Billy’s time behind the computer. Yet what feels like an easy King conceit - hey, the man loves dreaming up fictional writers - winds up giving the novel its curious depth. What grounds him, though, is his cover: Billy is a struggling writer working out the kinks of his debut novel in a commercial office space that also provides a choice vantage point for his hit. As with any swan song, there are myriad wrinkles and peculiarities to the job, all of which keep Billy (and, by proxy, us Constant Readers) sweating. On the surface, the 500-page thriller captures the last gig for the titular assassin, a decorated Iraq war veteran who is hired to take out the trash (and only the trash, mind you). His latest novel, Billy Summers, is a testament to these truths.

Even more to that point, there are some muscles he’s come to sharpen and refine over the years, particularly as his own sensibilities evolve. Granted, at 73, the Master of Horror is far removed from his salad years of peppering smutty magazines with pulpy parables, but like the best protagonists in this chewy genre, there are some muscles he’ll never stop flexing.

Holly Gibney ring a bell?īut if there’s anything King loves more than a good pulpy story, it’s sitting down and writing a better one himself. Hell, one cursory glance at his own eclectic catalogue proves that he’s spent the last decade less concerned with what’s under the bed and more intrigued by what’s behind the yellow tape. Bosch, The Good Fight, Big Sky, Designated Survivor, Chance, the list goes on. Scroll through his Twitter feed long enough, and you’ll see that the best-selling author lives for hard-boiled stories centered around characters with guns in their hands, heat in their hearts, and principles on their mind.

Billy summers book review