I’ve always thought that a man had to have a certain amount of class to pull off wearing a fedora, and Keller fits that profile even if he is a hired I’ve always thought that a man had to have a certain amount of class to pull off wearing a fedora, and Keller fits that profile even if he is a hired killer.
In this short novella Keller gets an interesting proposition. A potential client wants a hit man to take care of his wife’s lover, but he doesn’t know who it is. So the job involves doing some investigating before getting to the murder, and Keller finds himself so intrigued that he buys a new hat because he’s in a detective frame of mind. Things seem to go according to plan at first, but as usual it’s only the killing itself that goes smoothly for Keller.
I was a little hesitant about this because Block had taken Keller through a journey in the novels that seemed to end with his happy retirement, but that’s kind of turned into a semi-retirement which I worried might undercut the entire Keller story a bit. However, Block’s landed at an interesting place with Keller and how he feels about his work so that him dipping a toe back into murder-for-hire doesn’t seem that out of place or a contradiction of what came before.
A lot of the previous books were built off short stories in which Keller goes on gigs that take weird turns while his doubts about what kind of person he was bubbled up in interesting ways. (Any TV producers looking for a crime series to adapt for a show could do a lot worse than Keller.) So getting another installment in this form seems like a natural fit, and I've always loved Keller's tendency to drift off on musings and questions sparked by everyday things he encounters. So it was a genuine delight to be back in Keller’s head that was sporting a spiffy new lid.
In addition to being a fine piece of writing it also functions as great advertising for the hat industry because I wanted to rush out and buy a fedora while reading it....more
Back at the beginning of this series, professional hit man Keller would often fantasize about retiring and buying a house in one of the cities he visiBack at the beginning of this series, professional hit man Keller would often fantasize about retiring and buying a house in one of the cities he visited while on the job, and circumstances beyond his control eventually pushed into that very situation. When we last saw him, Keller was living in New Orleans under a new name and with a new job that didn’t involve murdering people for money. It seemed as if Lawrence Block, had written a happy ending for the guy, and it was a very satisfactory way to close out Keller's story.
So I was a little nervous when I heard that Block had a new Keller book coming out. It felt like there was a lot of potential to screw up an ending that I liked a lot. I should have had more faith in the writer who has brought Matt Scudder back from apparent conclusions several times.
Keller is happy in New Orleans with his wife and infant daughter. The construction business he got into has taken a hit with the housing bust, but he still has enough money banked to make ends meet. Of course, a serious philatelist like Keller could always use more money for his hobby, and when an opportunity to resume his former job in Dallas coincides with a stamp auction he wanted to attend, Keller finds himself back in the murder-for-hire game.
Like most of the other Keller books, this is really a series of long short stories about different jobs that Keller works. (Note to TV executives, if you’re looking for another book series to adapt, check this out. Each Keller’s story could be an episode. I have some ideas. Call me.) In addition to his Dallas trip, Keller also takes a cruise, makes a homecoming trip to New York and tries to work a job around his appraisal of a large stamp collection.
While this is as entertaining and engaging as the other Keller books, I gotta say that I was a little depressed while reading it. Keller enthusiasm for his work always waxed and waned, but there was always the feeling that he was working towards getting out someday. Seeing Keller back on the job when he really doesn’t need the money saddened me a bit. I feared that it was making him seem more selfish and unfeeling than he’d been previously.
Fortunately, Block deals with this directly, and I still thought that Keller is a petty decent guy despite what he does by the end of the book. It’s a testament to Block’s skill in crafting such a great character that I think I’d be more than happy to read another book if it was just Keller’s adventures in stamp collecting with absolutely no murder-for-hire....more
Lawrence Block has always embodied New York to me in a lot of ways. He’s a guy who writes about the city with casual flair and great affection. I saw Lawrence Block has always embodied New York to me in a lot of ways. He’s a guy who writes about the city with casual flair and great affection. I saw Block at a book signing a few months after 9/11, and he politely asked the crowd that no one ask about his reaction to the World Trade Center attack because he had lost friends, and it was still too raw for him to talk about. He’d go on to write Small Town which had a cast of fictional New Yorkers dealing with the aftermath of the attacks in varying and bizarre ways.
But Block also had his regular series characters react to that day. Keller may be a hit man, but he’s also a New Yorker. Block wrote some moving scenes here with Keller being in Miami for a job during 9/11 and having an extremely unexpected and emotional response to the events in his home city. The ruthless hit man returns home and volunteers to spend his nights serving meals to rescue workers.
While the book is typical Keller in that he has to confront a variety of complications while he carries out his work, 9/11 changes his outlook. The new air security measures make it more risky for him to fly to his targets with fake ID, and Keller feels a sudden urge to retire. He and his booking agent Dot decide that they need to do a lot of hits quickly so that they can both build nest eggs before leaving the business. But that kind of volume means that the usually careful Keller is willing to take some jobs he’d normally turn down.
While 9/11 plays a part in the story, the book still isn’t overly grim, and it still has a lot of humor with Keller’s imagination and offbeat code of ethics coming into play as he tries to complete hits against a variety of odd targets. There’s even a bit of a sports theme this time as Keller tries to kill a famous baseball player, gets involved in horse racing and spends some time thinking about why he hates basketball....more
They say that all good things must come to an end, and apparently Lawrence Block decided to follow that conventional wisdom regarding his stories abouThey say that all good things must come to an end, and apparently Lawrence Block decided to follow that conventional wisdom regarding his stories about the stamp collecting and slightly lonely hit man, Keller.
Retirement has been on Keller’s mind going back to the first book, but now that his friend and booking agent, Dot, has parlayed the earnings from contract killing into big stock market gains, it looks like Keller may finally be really getting out of the hit man business. However, a job that they’ve been pre-paid for comes in just as they’re getting ready to move on so Keller is off to Iowa to eliminate one last target.
As Keller is indulging in a round of stamp buying at a shop, a prominent politician campaigning for the presidency in Iowa is assassinated, and Keller’s picture is almost instantly on CNN as the suspected gunman. Since he just spent most of his cash on stamps, Keller is broke, on the run, and Dot isn’t answering the phone. Too late, Keller realizes that a guy who spent his life killing people for money makes a pretty convenient fall guy.
You get certain expectations after you read a series for a while. Even when an author shakes up a formula for a book, you always assume that there will some kind of return to baseline in the next one. That’s why this shocked me about a quarter of the way into it when I realized that there was absolutely no way that the Keller books as I knew them would ever continue. There was an event at this point where it set in that I’d never again read about Keller taking the train to White Plains to talk with Dot about the latest job as they drank iced tea on her porch, or that there’d never be another scene where Keller would stroll down a New York street on his way back to his apartment to work on his stamp collection. And it was very disconcerting.
(I’m making an assumption here, but it’s hard to read this as anything but a swan song for Keller. I guess Block could use the same trick that Max Allen Collins used for his hit man, Quarry, and introduce a series of stories told before he retired, but I think Block is done with Keller.)
If this is the last one, then Block sent Keller out in style by once again having us root for the ‘bad guy’ as the inventive Keller scrambles to get out of Iowa and figure out how he can possibly have any kind of a life again. I hate to see the series end, but this was a great way to do it....more
Keller is a creature of habit. He leads a low-key New York lifestyle and his idea of a good time is collecting stamps. Even his job as a hit man has aKeller is a creature of habit. He leads a low-key New York lifestyle and his idea of a good time is collecting stamps. Even his job as a hit man has a certain routine. He gets a job, he flies somewhere, he kills someone, and he flies home.
But weird disruptions are happening to Keller in this second book in the series. A trip to Louisville with complications leaves him out of sorts. Odd events on a couple of other jobs don’t help matters. An offhand comment from a woman he’s seeing leaves him wondering if he was destined to be a killer, and leads him to consult an astrologist. Keller even has to deal with jury duty. And he’s starting to realize that he may be in a rival’s crosshairs.
Block has done a great job of turning a hired killer into a sympathetic character and while Keller’s story is serious, there’s also an undercurrent of absurd black humor. I read these books not just for the plots about how Keller carries out his work but for Keller’s idle musings about certain aspects of everyday life and his conversations with Dot, the woman who books his contracts.
Keller's a pretty normal guy. He does crosswords, loves dogs, collects stamps and buys earrings for his girlfriend every time he travels. And he traveKeller's a pretty normal guy. He does crosswords, loves dogs, collects stamps and buys earrings for his girlfriend every time he travels. And he travels a lot since his job is killing people.
Block did a great job with this string of short stories about Keller that build a character study about a professional hit man who often finds himself dealing with odd circumstances despite his desire to just do the job and get out of town. Keller isn't a psycho, but he isn't exactly wracked with guilt either.
Keller's also got a tendency to get a bit lost in his own imagination as he does his job, and Block uses these to add some themes to the stories. For example, after reading a paperback western on the plane to a Wyoming town to kill a guy, Keller spends the rest of the trip thinking of himself as the heroic drifter in a western movie who's blown into town.
It's Keller's idle musings that make these stories different from other hired killer books. Keller's mind will wander, but at some point his pragmatic streak kicks in and he'll focus on just getting the job done. Too bad for his targets that he's really good at it....more
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