I have a confession to make right up front – I like Philip Kerr’s books. I have yet to read one that I did not like (though I am not as fond of the Children of the Lamp books as his other work). So when I saw a used paperback copy of this ten year old novel, I snapped it up. It took a while to fit it into my reading schedule, but being a perfect ‘ride the Metro’ paperback size helped a great deal. Finally, when I had less than a hundred pages to go and was anticipating the assassination of a world leader I gave myself a reprieve and decided to read this even off of the Metro.

This is not one of the Berlin-based Bernie Gunther stories through which I was introduced to Philip Kerr. The main character here is Tom Jefferson, a freelance hit man with a fondness for American Presidential names and specializes in long range rifle shot style killings. The time is 1960 at the dawning of Camelot with the story set against the background of John Fitzgerald Kennedy’s election victory over Richard Nixon and the Castro revolution in Cuba. Philip Kerr’s cast of characters had me wanting to Google every single name he introduced or merely mentioned just to see if I could decipher his research for this book – was he using old US Government phone books, the Warren Commission reports, Damon Runyon stories, or those US Government reports on organized crime?

I read some years ago that what separates a good mystery novel from the mediocre or even bad one is the “flip” and how the author handles it when telling the story. The “flip” as all mystery novel readers know is that moment when the author takes your self-satisfied belief that you have the book all figured out and stands you on your head, presenting you with a completely different story than the one you thought you were reading. For my money, especially in “The Shot,” nobody does this better than Philip Kerr. By the time I finished this novel, I thought I had been reading at least five completely different stories from the one I finished – and I enjoyed the ride. Hard to beat that in this genre. ( )

Very well written characters and plot. A believable (?) variation on The Conspiracy Theory. Great story teller. ( )

This is nothing if not convoluted: Tom Jefferson is a professional assassin who specializes in long-distance sniper-type executions, but is not averse to getting his hands dirty at close quarters; he is hired by mafia figures in the US (in cahoots with the CIA) to assess the feasibility of shooting Castro, but unknown to either employer, his sympathies lie with the Cuban revolution and he is double-timing them to the Cuban secret police; he takes a substantial downpayment for the murder, but then disappears when his wife is murdered and the mafia types, still not knowing his true allegiances, figure out that he is going to shoot John Kennedy, the President-elect, so they gear-up their substantial resources to find and stop him because, having delivered the election to Kennedy, they believe that he will go easy on the investigation of organized crime and work with them on an invasion of Cuba to overthrow Castro; they hire a retired FBI tough-guy named Nimmo who does some spiffy investigative work to find Jefferson who has done an excellent job of covering his tracks; meanwhile, Jefferson is proceeding with his planning for a shot at Kennedy when he visits Harvard, and in this, he is assisted by Alex Goldman, a current FBI guy who spearheads the outing of communists and is an all-round shit-disturber, but who is also working for Cuban intelligence. The whole thing builds to an interesting climax and conclusion. A decent thriller and a quick read, but not as good as Kerr's Berlin Noir trilogy, maybe because the mafia/FBI/CIA/political connections seem too familiar and lack the atmosphere that Kerr produced so well in wartime Berlin and post-war Vienna.
(Dec/00)