As a fan of Stephen King’s works – dating back to almost a quarter of a century now! – I was excited to see his new book come out. It was released in early August, but I held out on beginning to read it until my son and I took our yearly trip.
Now, this was a very short and busy trip, so there was not all that much time for me to read it while down there. Only during the quiet hours of the mornings and evenings, and occasionally, maybe at other times. My son and I were also reading George Orwell’s 1984, through Youtube audiobook. So again, I was not able to finish this until we got back.
Once we did get back, there was that usual takeoff point, as there pretty much always is with Stephen King books. It proved to be a very enjoyable book to read, and it actually surprised me quite a bit with all of the different twists and turns that it took. It seemed to be going in one direction for much of the early part of the book, and it felt like it was moving fast. Then, it took a turn. Several turns, actually. And it became about something else entirely.
Without getting into too many details, I think that Stephen King was trying some new tricks for his writing repertoire in this one. He tries a lot of new things, which is no easy task for somebody who is known as arguably the most prolific writer of his era, having written something like sixty books.
Now, I will write a more thorough and detailed review below, but I feel obliged to give the usual warnings that there will be spoilers ahead. Major spoilers, in fact. So, if you have not yet read this book and are planning to do so, or if you do not want it spoiled one way or another for whatever the reason, here is the warning not to read further.
Spoiler Alert!!
Okay, so if you are still reading, I have to assume that either you have read the book, or you do not mind the spoilers coming. Just don’t say that you weren’t warned!
Alright, now, I wanted to talk about the aspect of this book that both surprised and impressed me the most: all of the different things that he managed to do with his writing in this particular book. Anyone who has read this book, and is familiar with other Stephen King works in general, will probably know what I am about to talk about here.
What differed? Well, in the first part of the book, it feels like it is a straightforward book about an assassin about to do his last job. However, this is layered on multiple levels, because this assassin, Billy Summers, tries to come across as dumber than he actually is. So, there are two different versions of this man, the one King terms as the Dumb Self, and then the real Billy Summers. The dumb version tries to show the world that he reads nothing really more sophisticated than comic books, particularly Archie comics. But the real Summers is actually quite well read, and both interested in and well-versed in literature. He speaks a bit about some of the works that he has read, and shares his thoughts on them.
Yet, he is to pose as a writer before his next assignment which is, of course, an assassination. He takes this as a challenge to actually write, something that he in fact has always thought of doing. But to protect the image that he wants people to keep of him, he writes in his "dumb self" voice. As mentioned earlier, it is my feeling that Stephen King really flexes his writing muscles in this book, and this is what I mean. The dumb self version of the book that Summers writes is written in a unique voice, yet it proves to be moving in it's own right. it also is good disguise, helping to convince those who Summers wants to be convinced that he is, after all, pretty dumb.
Meanwhile, Summers makes friends with people. People in his neighborhood, and one family in the neighboring house in particular. People at his workplace. He pretends to be some else, of course. There is one thing, though: he feels that it would be a serious mistake to get too close to anyone, knowing full well that what he has to do, his real job, is an assassination, and he will have to disappear literally as soon as this task is completed.
This, too, is complicated. The mafia types who hired him for this dirty deed have an escape plan, but Billy wants nothing to do with it. However, he knows that he cannot let on that he wants nothing to do with it, and so pretends to go right along with it. At least, that is, until the job is done. He has his own escape plan, and it works to perfection. Not only has he escaped from the scene where he did the assassination, but he has escaped from the mafia bosses who pretended wanted to help him escape, but who he is increasingly convinced were going to kill him at the end of it all.
So, he makes his escape, and then does not get paid the full amount that he was promised for doing the job. This makes him angry, and so he goes after the mafia guys who hired him.
Here is where the story takes a major turn. The whole assassination thing seemed to be what this book was about, but all of that was completed perhaps a third of the way through the book. It is then that we are introduced to two other characters. One, Alice Maxwell, is completely new. She and Billy meet almost by chance, after her sort of boyfriend and two of his friends simply drop her off in what they wrongly assume to be a more or less abandoned neighborhood, but which is where Billy Summers has escaped to. Billy runs out and takes her in, possibly even saves her. He nurses her back to health. She soon discovers that he is the assassin that has been making the headlines and is still actively being searched for, but she does not rat on him. In fact, as it turns out, she falls in love with him, even though their relationship cannot be a physical one, and it cannot even be an unconventional romance. As the saying goes, it is complicated.
Long story short, she insists that she helps him take out the mafia guys that he needs to take care of in order to be safe and get his money back. Yet even here, there is a twist. When he finally gets to Nick, the main mafia guy who promised to pay him all of the money, he learns the truth about why he was hired to make the assassination.
Yet even here, there is a twist. It turns out that the man who was behind the orchestrated killing is Roger Klerke, who in this fictional world is more or less the head guy at a right-wing media outlet that bares a striking resemblance to FOX News. It turns out that this is a really bad man. Klerke has ordered the killing to hide the fact that he ordered the killing of his own son, in order that the other, preferred son inherits the right-wing news outlet. He is a pedophile, and this is where Alice comes in. To get Billy access into Klerke's lavish home, Alice has to look and seem like a teenage girl, an underage one. Billy gets access, but there are nonetheless complications. And in the end, Alice learns that killing a man is haunting, even if he really is a bad man.
So, they did what they set out to do. They have made arrangements to get Billy's promised money for the first assassination, and then they kill a really bad man. This is the other thing about Billy: he does not want to consider himself a bad man, so his assassinations are strictly aimed at people who he can be convinced are bad people. This, he understands, does not make him a good man, but it makes what he does a bit easier to digest. Now, he feels that he has pulled off his final, most important job, and managed to successfully kill a truly bad man.
However, this is not a "happily ever after" kind of novel, of course. When he was reaching Nick, the mafia head, Billy had been forced to hurt Marge, who is not only the mother of one of Nick's armed guards, but is herself one of his guards. In fact, he has to seriously hurt her son, who is still in the hospital, and with limited chances of a successful recovery. So Marge is out to get him, and after Billy assassinates Roger Klerke, she pops out and surprises him, as well. He winds up shooting her, but not before he himself is shot. And so, even though he and Alice make an escape, Billy is dying, slowly, surely, and painfully.
In the end, we read the end of what has become Billy's story. There is considerable doubt that his story can ever be truly published, because the assassination of Roger Klerke was very high profile, and Alice, who has completed the writing of the story, would be implicating herself. Yet, we are made to understand that Billy is happy just to have shared his story, even to just the very limited audience that he has.
Overall, I really enjoyed this book. As I surely have mentioned before in previous book reviews, I admire King's writing. It is not even the horror genre, but his writing style itself that appeals to me. The characters themselves feel real. Real enough, in any case, that it feels like I am taking almost a break, or a mini vacation, from myself while reading the story. Even when some of the situations they find themselves in feel unrealistic and/or over the top - and that has happened in some of King's works - it nevertheless is almost always enjoyable. And as was mentioned more than once already, King really seems to be testing his writing abilities here, doing some things that we have never seen him try before, or at least not to this extent.
This is an enjoyable read. It is not exactly horror, although it is a book that will surely be found in the horror section of your favorite bookshop. But it is, in some ways, both a vintage Stephen King book, while also deviating a bit from what he has done in the past. Between Billy's multiple disguises, which come with varying degrees of subtlety and at least surface personality changes, to the varying writing styles reflected in this book (remember, some of this books is done in the voice of the fictional Billy Summers, in both his big dumb self voice, as well as his more straightforward one), this one proved really entertaining.
Highly recommended!
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