Hit and Run

I must admit I love the Keller series. In this one, just as he's planning his retirement from being a hit man, Keller is set up and loses everything, including his best friend Dot, his big screen TV and NYC apartment, not to mention his treasured stamp collection. But getting kicked out of his old life opens a new one, where he finds new and surprising abilities and depths to his personality. There's a reason Lawrence Block is a best selling author… he's created an intriguingly complex character in Keller and his prose just swims you along. I confess, this isn't the first time I've read this book. Block's books are fun the second and third times around.

Keller is a hit man, someone willing to kill just about anyone if the price is right. He understands that his long term survival depends on never being spotted at the scene of one of his hits and, if the circumstances require it, he is willing to kill any witnesses who come so close that they might later be able to identify him. Man or woman, it really doesn’t matter much to John Keller. One can only hope that he at least draws the line at the children of his targets.

And, with the help of Dot, the woman who functions as his manager, Keller has done quite well over the last few years. He has a couple of million dollars stashed in an offshore bank account, a valuable stamp collection that he’s nurtured for years, and intentions to show more retire after one last hit. As for Dot, let’s just say that she’s perfectly suited for her job, seeing nothing wrong with killing for profit or for her own personal survival.

But funny things happen on Keller’s last job and, even though he senses that something is a little off about the job and the people who hired him, before he knows it he has been identified as the assassin of Iowa’s governor and he, along with millions of others, is staring at his face on CNN. As Keller sees it, his only chance is to make his way back to his New York City apartment where he hopes to regroup long enough to figure out a survival plan for himself and Dot.

Getting from Des Moines to New York City with only a few dollars in cash, a stolen credit card or two, and a packet of expensive stamps in one pocket is not easy, as Keller is quick to learn. But the hit man has acquired a few skills over the course of his career that give him a fighting chance of making it there in one piece and, since he could come up with no better plan, he heads in that direction.

In Hit and Run, Lawrence Block has pulled off the near impossible task of making a rather despicable pair of killers like John Keller and his partner into sympathetic, even likable, characters. It is hard not to root for them as they struggle to survive long enough to identify those who set them up to take the fall in a major political assassination and, when they decide to get even, they become the good guys in this dark comedy thriller.

Lawrence Block makes all of this look a lot easier than it is. He has written fifty-something books now and, although I’ve read quite a few of them, I’ve never been disappointed by one. This one is book four of the “Keller series” but, strangely enough, it is the first novel of the series and easily can be enjoyed as a standalone novel by those unfamiliar with the Keller short story collections.

Block has done it again; this one is fun

Rated at: 4.5 show less

I don't know why Lawrence Block didn't just take the time to pad out some more of the many Keller short stories into full novels like this, they read much better. I love the stamp-collecting hitman and the way Block writes him in any form, but there's no real character development in the shorter instalments and a lot of repetition.

Keller is framed for the murder of a politician and has to go on the run, cutting all ties - or having them cut for him - with his old life. Mourning the loss of his stamp collection and tormented by the fate of his only friend, Dot, the future looks increasingly bleak - until fate, in the form of a New Orleans teacher nursing her dying father, steps in. Keller adopts an alias and trades one practical show more profession for another, happy with his new life, but still has one or two loose ends to tie up first.

This story could stand alone, in my opinion - Block refers back to a lot of the short stories anyway, so reading the first and fourth books would probably be enough to get the gist of the series. Entertaining, well-paced, funny and even sad in places, Keller scores a bulls-eye with this one. show less

This is the 4th book in the author's Keller series. Keller is a hit man for hire, but very different than what you might normally run across. The first three books were short stories loosely put together as novels and as a result there was a lot of repetition and things didn't always flow so well. Nevertheless I liked the preceding books. This book is the first that feels written as a novel. We get to dive deeper into character without it being repeated which is really nice. I thought we were going to have the first "great" Keller novel but one thing in the story pretty much killed that thought. Keller's partner 'Dot' does something really disturbing and disgusting. I won't say more except that the event almost spoiled the book for me. show more Still I liked it more than not and think this was the best Keller book yet. I was also pretty happy with how it ended. The series could have, maybe should have ended here with this 2008 book but one more came out, "Hit Me" in 2013 which I think I will read soon. Then I think we'll be done. show less

I have always enjoyed Lawrence Block's "hit man" series -- the stories of a down-to-earth killer who is an avid stamp collector. Keller seems to be a pretty nice guy, considering he kills people for a living; and there's a refreshing absence of high tech toys and James Bond-like adventures in the books. As Keller himself puts it, the people he kills usually know why they've been targeted -- they're not innocent lambs being herded to the slaughterhouse.

In a sense, it's this very lack of high strung dramatics that makes the Keller books such a refreshing read. So it was with some surprise that I realized this latest book was a sharp departure from the norm.

Keller agrees to take on one last job before he permanently retires from the show more field. Of course, it's one job too many -- as he discovers he's been set up to take the fall for a very public political assassination. Stranded in Iowa, Keller finds himself cut off from his closest associate with every law enforcement agency in the country after him. And that's not the worst of his troubles -- the men who arranged the assassination are also on his trail, hoping to shut his mouth and quench his curiosity permanently.

As always, it's Block's masterly limning of his characters that makes reading his books a pleasure. Keller is no superhuman MacGyver, using bubble gum and a sock to wriggle out of impossible situations. Au contraire. . .it's Keller's very human reactions to the tight spots he finds himself in that connects him to the reader. His dogged determination to survive, and to figure out how he can recreate a new life from the ashes of his old one is captivating.

A most enjoyable read. Highly recommended. show less

A series of novels with a professional hitman as the protagonist must involve the reader in the question of how an author draws one into sympathetic concern for a character we would dispise in real life. Keller makes not pretense that the people he is paid to kill deserve to die--they are simply dangerous or inconvenient to someone with the money and connections to hire him. In this book Kellers situation may seem superficially sympathetic as he is framded for the assasination of a poplular black governor. But the only actually virtuous deed he performs is the rescue of a stranger from a serial rapist. Given the opportunity to build a new life he does so only because his old life seems to have been completely destroyed.

So read the book show more and ask yourself why you can care. show less

Hit and Run is, believe it or not, a Naturalist thriller. It's premised on the question: What would it be like if a hit man were to settle down, get a real job, work on his stamp collection, and try to leave the past behind?

The problem is, who cares?

As it turns out, in case you wanted to know (as if anyone would), he's a pretty good home remodeler, but he prefers laying bathroom tile to sanding wood floors. Also, he likes New Orleans Saints ball caps better than Homer Simpson ones. And he watches a lot of television. Which we're told all about. For no apparent reason.

The book has absolutely zero action in it, except for one scene. There is another that might almost count, because he shoots a guy---but it's a convenience store clerk, and show more that's all there is to it, he just pulls out a gun and shoots the guy and that's it. He then proceeds to rob the man, in what turns out to be the only scene in the book in which the author exercises any selectivity in an attempt to convey some meaning---we're told that the convenience store guy has a stack of hardcover Ayn Rand novels and a blow up doll with an Ann Coulter mask on it in his bedroom. This is apparently the author's weak idea of portraying a right-wing loser---the only problem is, as anyone who has read Ayn Rand knows, she has about as much in common with Ann Coulter as she does with Michael Moore.

And for a hit man, the main character is incredibly dimwitted. The second something goes wrong, he's completely paralyzed. He's not exactly a master of disguises (the aforementioned Homer Simpson ball cap is the best he can do), and he can't come up with a plan to save his life---literally. He pretty much just gets by on dumb luck (or rather by the author's whim, since this is fiction, but the author can't contrive any believable means for him to negotiate his situation). It's as though the author hasn't done any research at all, but just sits at his writing desk relying on pure imagination---and unfortunately, he is singularly unimaginative.

All in all, this has got to be the dullest "thriller" ever written. At least, it was the dullest one I've ever had the misfortune to read, and I've read my share. show less