HIT MAN
By Lawrence Block
Morrow, $22
By all appearances, Keller is just a regular guy, trying to get by in Manhattan. He loves doing the Times crossword puzzle, someday would like to get a dog and retire to a small town, and thinks his boss might be going a bit daffy. What sets him apart from most folks, though, is his chosen profession: hit man.
Keller criss-crosses the country fulfilling contracts arranged quietly through a broker in nearby White Plains. He is, pure and simple, a professional–a salesman of death, if you will–and Lawrence Block’s matter-of-fact depiction of this assassin’s life is both haunting and perversely entertaining.
Each succinct chapter of “Hit Man” describes a single chilling crime. While Keller’s victims are mostly unremarkable citizens, their demise usually involves some interesting twist that serves to reveal yet another facet of the man inside the monster.
“Thing is, he wasn’t stupid. Cold, unyielding, insensitive, but not stupid,” writes Block, as his creation considers the many identities he has assumed. “If you wanted to play the name game, you didn’t have to limit yourself to the alias he had selected. You could have plenty of fun with the name he’d borne all his life. . . .
“Keller. In German, it meant cellar, or tavern. But the hell with that, you didn’t need to know what it meant in a foreign language. Just change a vowel. Keller=killer.
“Clear enough, wasn’t it.”
Block, one the genre’s finest practitioners, is in fine form here. Anyone looking for a disturbing detour from the mainstream will want to pick up “Hit Man.”
BLOODY SECRETS
By Carolina Garcia-Aguilera
Putnam, $23.95
In her third Lupe Solano novel, Miami-based Carolina Garcia-Aguilera clearly has hit her stride. Where the earlier “Bloody Waters” and “Bloody Shame” offered great promise and a sassy Cuban-American P.I. we could grow to love, “Bloody Secrets” emerges as a fully mature work of suspense and mystery, and Solano has blossomed into one of the genre’s most formidable protagonists.
The novel begins in the twilight days of the Batista regime, as members of Cuba’s ruling elite try to find ways to transfer their wealth to the U.S. A scheme hatched in 1958 in Havana ends up being played out nearly 40 years later in Miami, when a desperate refugee escapes the island by raft to collect the fortune owed him by powerful players in the exile community.
What initially unspools as a simple case of betrayal and retribution ultimately becomes more complicated. The struggle of Solano’s hard-edged client, Luis Delgado, threatens her personal equilibrium and her father’s dreams of returning to Cuba. While maintaining a spirited pace, Garcia-Aguilera spins an intricate web of deceit that tests the ethical limits of her growing family of characters and keeps her readers off balance as they enter unfamiliar worlds.
TOKEN OF REMORSE
By Michael Stone
Viking, $21.95
In this testosterone-enriched mystery–the third in the series of Denver-based Streeter novels from Michael Stone–the author puts weapons into the hands of three former football players and allows us to watch in horror as they work out their aggressions on each other. It’s all great broad-shouldered fun.
Bounty hunter Streeter is hired by a waterbed tycoon to find his ne’er-do-well nephew, who, along with his wily mistress, has disappeared with the weekly cash proceeds from a string of sex shops. The former linebacker has a pretty good idea where they’re hiding, but he soon discovers he’s competing with two musclebound enforcers who not only want to get their money back but also exact a fair bit of pain.
Richie and Tina think they are holding some leverage, because they also stole some incriminating files. But they don’t fully appreciate how many angry people they left behind in Denver. They soon find out.
Populated by the same kinds of oddball characters who enrich Quentin Tarantino’s films, the noirish “Token of Remorse” is full of ripe dialogue, unexpected plot twists and sudden violence. Streeter’s the real deal, and Stone’s writing makes him come alive with great energy and humor.
BLOODSTAINED KINGS
By Tim Willocks
Random House, $23
In his exciting debut novel, “Green River Rising,” Tim Willocks took readers on a horrific ride through the innards of an ancient prison being ripped apart by crazed inmates. In no less frightening a journey, “Bloodstained Kings” follows a group of deranged Southern Gothic types competing to unlock the mysteries hidden inside two suitcases left behind by a dead ex-cop, the thoroughly corrupt Clarence Jefferson.
The swamps and forests of Georgia and Louisiana provide more than enough overripe atmosphere for the evil that explodes in “Bloodstained Kings,” especially after Filmore Faroe, the husband of filthy rich Lenna Parillaud, escapes from the makeshift jail she has built for him on their plantation. Faroe’s crimes included ordering Jefferson to kill his wife’s bastard child and generally being a racist swine. He wants revenge.
Parillaud enlists the help of Grimes, a disgraced New Orleans physician, who’s also being taunted by Jefferson’s ghost. Together they track down the documents, but they must battle a private army to keep them.
When he isn’t writing these highly literary thrillers, Willocks pens screenplays and performs psychiatric duties in a detox center in London. It helps explain where some of these painful visions are born.
MURDER UNDER BLUE SKIES
By Willard Scott, with Bill Crider
Dutton, $23.95
Yes, that Willard Scott. Don’t feel alone if you’re mistrustful of mysteries co-authored by celebrities; most of them aren’t very good. “Murder Under Blues Skies” won’t make anyone forget Agatha Christie, either, but–in truth–it’s not a bad little whodunit.
In it, retired TV meteorologist Stanley Waters buys a bed-and-breakfast in his boyhood home in Virgina. The grand opening is spoiled after a local resident has an unhappy encounter with some poisoned salsa. Waters, of course, takes it upon himself to help solve the crimes and thereby save the reptutation of his new business.
Scott’s contribution includes spicing the narrative with warm reminiscences of meals past, and some weather and TV shtick. Bill Crider, I imagine, filled in the rest.
IN BRIEF: Even though Cuba Libre (Delacorte, $23.95) doesn’t resemble much of Elmore Leonard’s later work, fans of the author’s will find plenty to like in his new historical novel, which is set largely in the period between the sinking of the Maine and the start of the Spanish-American War. The hostilities that are about to erupt between the various forces on the island are described through the experiences of two American cowboys, a sailor who survives the Maine disaster, a sugar planter’s mistress and various police and military officials. Leonard’s love of the American West and his fascination with the period inform this thoroughly researched work. But there’s enough crime and gunplay in “Cuba Libre” to keep his devoted fans happy too.
