Stephen King - Billy Summers (Book Review)

 

From legendary storyteller and No. 1 bestseller Stephen King, whose 'restless imagination is a power that cannot be contained' (The New York Times Book Review), comes a thrilling new novel about a good guy in a bad job.

Billy Summers is a man in a room with a gun. He's a killer for hire and the best in the business. But he'll do the job only if the target is a truly bad guy. And now Billy wants out. But first there is one last hit. Billy is among the best snipers in the world, a decorated Iraq war vet, a Houdini when it comes to vanishing after the job is done. So what could possibly go wrong?

How about everything.

This spectacular can't-put-it-down novel is part war story, part love letter to small town America and the people who live there, and it features one of the most compelling and surprising duos in King fiction, who set out to avenge the crimes of an extraordinarily evil man. It's about love, luck, fate, and a complex hero with one last shot at redemption.

You won't put this story down, and you won't forget Billy.

*

Strengths:

I personally know Stephen King through his horror stories, and although I know he has being varying it over the past few years, this turn into a crime thriller was a major surprise to me and something I personally came about the regular newsletter from comics crimewriter Ed Brukabker who raved it and I can see why with this book.

Composed through the eyes of a hired killer, Billy Summers the book is split into three separate parts, but woven together to create an intricate tale of love, war, justice and vengeance. The protagonist is a complex killer carrying around a head full of demons, yet a Robin Hood, who champions those who have been wronged.

I found this structure quite surprising as this could have easily being split into two books, even though the book is far from the longest book I have ever read by Mr King and perhaps proved one of the most surprising when during Act 2 you could say he rescues a young lady called Alice who literally turns his life inside out.

Respect to the author here as the relationship between Summers and Alice doesn’t go in a direction I didn’t think it would during the second Act and what happens in the third Act but the journey he goes on and the impact Alice and the way she influences both him and his friend Bucky is interesting and really touching and gives

Weaknesses:

I did think the pacing was a bit slow during Act 1 and I was glad the author made the choice to do what he did with it to speed us into meeting Alice, although I do think he could trimmed a chunk out of this section as when Alice came into the book, the book completely changed gears (for the better too)

I wasn’t also fully convinced with the bits of a novel within a novel as I’ve read better examples of that (Paul Auster has done that at least twice better) and I was a little concerned in places of the way Alice seemed to take like a duck to water with wanting to get involved in being a killer / get involved in a mission.

I did think too the choice to tell the story in the third person was a curious choice and perhaps not a approach I would have attempted but it just about works for me here although it is not a complete success.

I enjoyed the book on a whole and it was quite a change in tone from some of his previous books that’s for sure.

8/10