Protagonists in Kevin Wignall's books are always pretty damaged people, either by events (like Conrad Hirst) or by their personality and nature (like JJ in this novel).

JJ is professional hitman working for the assassin network (for a lack of better term) that is hired by all sides - governments, criminal underground, basically whoever has the money. Everything works fine until by sheer accident JJ finds out that one of the intelligence agencies that his network works for began the cleanup of all witnesses (and all those linked to them) to one of the missions that took place a few years before.

JJ is a cold-blooded assassin and he steadily finds his way up the chain but in the process, he gets confronted with the results of his past actions.

A very interesting book. As one of the reviewers noted there is part were JJ develops a relationship with the teenage girl. What some found unsettling are JJ's thoughts at the beginning. My opinion is that JJ knows he is missing something, part of humanity he maybe never had (at one point he is surprised that people are ready to recognize him as a killer although he does not see himself as such) - call it empathy or guilt for killing so many - and he tries to find that in himself through relationship with this girl, by being simply a friend and staying in contact with someone who is outside his bloody trade (very much like attempts of the assassin in Kevin Wignall's other book [b: The Hunter's Prayer|25902505|The Hunter's Prayer|Kevin Wignall|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1436805391s/25902505.jpg|44997239] to help a girl hunted by assassins).

Good thriller, highly recommended. ( )

This isn't the type of novel I would normally read, apart from a connection to my favourite film, Grosse Pointe Blank, which is about a hitman. Random, but here I am!

JJ Hoffman, another loner hired gun with a heart, is similar to John Cusack's character, so I was happy. The plot is full of the usual macho clichés, including Russian mobsters and beautiful young women, plus a vague subplot about historical religious artefacts, but I liked JJ enough not to care - and bonus points for not making him 'see the light' and give up his violent vocation after meeting the family of a past 'hit'. He randomly tells a former girlfriend the truth about what he does, and has thinky thoughts about finding 'balance' in his life, but then still goes out and whacks anyone who crosses him.

Not sure if there's a sequel, but I definitely want to read more about JJ! ( )

As one who avoids the thriller genre in general, I surprised myself by being curious about one, curious enough to place a hold for it at my local library. It might have been something I read about the author, Kevin Wignall. Born in Belgium, family lived in Ireland and Germany before settling in W. England where Wignall lives today. Another factor is I've devoted this reading year to a goal of reading as many unknown-to-me authors as possible.

That aside, People Die is the most lyrical novel about killing that I've ever read. I lost track of the body count but when reading a story about a contract assassin who suddenly finds himself the object of the hunt instead of the confident hunter, what can a reader expect? William "JJ" Hoffman is no ordinary assassin. Instead, due to Wignall's prose and characterization, we see the human being rather than the monster we normally would expect to see in a person who earns his living ending other people's lives.

Wignall constantly shows us beauty even in violent death and weaves the threads of character into a philosophical and introspective man who is fully cognizant that he is damaged goods. In fact, the book is an exploration of the psyche of a killer without motive who yearns for and questions if there is redemption for him, a future of "normalcy" where he can fit in and be received among ordinary people who will not detect the stench of blood on him and who will not recoil from his company.

The pace of the book is uniquely tied to the action -- fast, taught, minimalist during kills; slowed, contemplative, poetic afterward. The plot is complex and nested, layer upon layer with no real resolution to all the motivations, so that we understand that the ambiguity in life that we all know is magnified for the hired killer. How can such a person ever get his feet on the ground?

The moral question in the novel -- ambiguously "resolved" -- is the Big One: Can good ever come out of evil? Can just ends evolve from foul means? People Die appears light on the surface but is weighted underneath, and leaves the reader who lives complacently by his/her own simple rules of right and wrong upside down in a moral stew yet with hope for a killer who fails to be heartless. ( )