King leaves the humour to writers who swing that way naturally as he trades better in an earnest, character-driven narrative that has its share of violence but does not descend into a gore-fest. Never so hardboiled to be corny as he gives us vivid pen-pictures of the cameos, he is nonetheless authoritative in terms of street smarts. In the assured hands of such a skilful storyteller we get a real feeling for where the character came from as a child, making it all the more believable when he goes out of his way to bring a young woman, who is the victim of the worst kind of attack, under his wing.

However, it is a matter of credibility-straining convenience that Billy fortuitously takes to the task of being a writer to the point where he delves into his life in Fallujah and other warzones as the last great assassination is in the pipeline or even when he is a fugitive on the run.īut it has to be acknowledged that his autobiography is captivating, particularly the story of his childhood - Billy the kid, as it were. King is a classy writer with a masterly control of his materials. Keeping the spoiler count to zero here, it spoils nothing to say he will need to disappear. Putting himself across as a writer and then there is another invented persona as he simultaneously sets up another identity, complete with wig and fake belly, in yet another community for when he needs to disappear from view after the job.

So he’s Billy the Marine, Billy the assassin, he’s the guy The employer for this job comes to him through layers of subterfuge concealing the identity of his actual paymaster. In fact, his real background is that he was a decorated marine who went on to sell his sniper services to the highest bidder with the somewhat far-fetched caveat that he would only shoot bad guys.

Billy is not just required to hunker down for a couple of hours or days but for several weeks becoming known in his apartment community under an alias with the made-up background of being a writer. The target is another assassin facing a murder trial for his last job and the long-range shot is to be taken as he is escorted up the courthouse steps.

Billy takes on the job despite a multitude of reservations for reasons of getting out on the big score and, beneficently of King, so that we might have a story. Stephen King’s narrator is a knowing dude who acknowledges that the one last job which is inevitably beset with unanticipated perils and pitfalls, is something of a sub-genre of crime fiction.īut this is no meta-fiction indulgence.

Review of billy summers