NB: A version of this post also appears on Existential Ennui.
Over on Existential Ennui, I’ve been blogging on and off for a while now about some of the signed editions I’ve acquired over the past however many months. Few of the books I’ve showcased thus far have been a good fit for The Violent World of Parker blog, but this latest one definitely is, because it’s by a friend and contemporary—not to mention occasional collaborator—of Donald E. Westlake’s, Lawrence Block, collecting—and reworking—a series of short stories starring a self-absorbed assassin. It’s a U.S. first edition/first impression of Hit Man, published by William Morrow in 1998, with dust jacket art by Phil Heffernan (actually misspelt “Heffernen” on the jacket flap) and overall jacket design by Bradford Foltz, whose recognizably elegant designs have wrapped novels by the aforementioned Donald Westlake (Watch Your Back!, Mysterious Press, 2005) and Dennis Lehane (the Kenzie and Gennaro novels Darkness, Take My Hand, Sacred, Gone, Baby, Gone and Prayers for Rain), among others.
Hit Man is the first of four books—soon to be five; there’s a new one due next year—featuring John Keller, a hired killer in the throes of an extended existential crisis. The stories in this first collection—some of which originally appeared in Playboy—see Keller carrying out a variety of hits, most of which take him from his base of New York to nothing towns that he fantasizes about moving to and settling down in. Keller’s quest to find some purpose in his life also sees him enter therapy (to less-than-satisfactory ends), get a girlfriend (ditto), get a dog (ditto again), and, best of all, in the final story, “Keller in Retirement,” take up stamp collecting (as a book and comic collector, I was especially tickled by some of the collecting minutiae Block works in in that last one). The stories are wryly amusing and in places jarringly violent; you get that same sense of a tale being spun by a master storyteller as you do with Westlake (his capers in particular) or Elmore Leonard (another friend and contemporary of Block’s). I liked the book a lot, and will definitely be back for more.
Hit Man had been on my radar for a while as one to read, so when I saw this copy squirreled away in the basement of a secondhand bookshop in London’s famous Cecil Court a few months back, and furthermore noted this inside:
I snapped it up. On the way back to Lewes from London I tweeted in a smug fashion that I’d just found a signed Lawrence Block book. Quick as a flash, LB tweeted back with, “It’s the unsigned ones that are rare”. Given that there are getting on for 3,000 signed Lawrence Block titles currently listed on AbeBooks, I guess he has a point, but even so: I was chuffed to get hold of a signed first edition of Hit Man, and an American first at that.
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Block’s Keller novels are very good. In a bizarre way, Keller is more human than Parker, even though he has an even worse occupation. We see more of Keller’s thoughts and desires than we ever do with Parker. You also get the sense that Keller could easily have been a law abiding citizen, while Parker I can’t even imagine being anything other than thief. Except maybe someother kind of criminal.
Yeah, Parker couldn’t possibly not be ‘on the bend’ in some way. It’s antithetical to his nature. The most interesting thing about him is that he has absolutely no doubts about his life, and the most interesting thing about a guy like Keller, I imagine, would be that he has a ton of doubts, but goes on living that way.
Picked up a copy of Graham Greene’s “This Gun For Hire”, about a professional assassin, on vacation, and boy does that sound like an American pulp novel of the 50’s or later (Mike Hammer, right?), but it was published in 1936–I found out later that the original title was “A Gun For Sale”, and they changed it for an American movie adaptation in 1942, with Alan Ladd and Veronica Lake. Gotta give it up to us Yanks when it comes to snappy titles. ;)
Correction–seems like the movie version of Greene’s novel followed the title of the American edition, so Hollywood doesn’t get the credit. I wonder if Greene approved?
Slight detour–“Did Graham Greene Invent Film Noir?”
http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/2008/dec/04/graham-greene-film-noir
To summarize–no. :)
Don’t know if Graham Greene invented film Noir, Chris, but John Cale wrote one bitchin’ song about him.
Lawrence Block is a stamp collector himself, and wrote a regular column on the subject. Some of them are collected in this inexpensive e-book.
Generally Speaking
Anyone looking to mix their passions for Stamps and Crime novels should peruse The Scarlet Ruse by John D. MacDonald. The Travis McGee series is one of the all-time best series of Crime novels I’ve ever read. BTW, the McGee novels are being rereleased in Trade PBs in Jan. from Random House, along with Kindle and Nook versions … finally! Hooray! Now if only that darn film adaptation of The Deep Blue Goodbye featuring Leo DiCaprio would finally go into production…
There’s a subgenre to what I like to call Criminal Procedurals, and it deals with assassins. There’s Max Allan Collins’ Quarry, Loren D. Estleman’s Peter Macklin, Lawrence Block’s Keller, etc. MAC’s Quarry series is, I believe, the first series which features a hitman as it’s protagonist. If anyone knows of one earlier than that, please reply to this post and let me know. And I don’t include goverment assassins such as Bond or Matt Helm in this subgenre; they’d go in the Spy-Fi genre. I’m talking about hitmen/women whose main incentive is financial.
I love Criminal Procedurals. So much better than Police Procedurals;-) lol
There’s a manga character called Golgo 13 who is a freelance assassin who predates Quarry by a few years. Though, he can’t really be said to have any influence on American crime stories, he is an extremely popular in Japan. He’s consider Japan’s answer to James Bond, and was actually created to replace a James Bond manga. However he hires out to anybody: CIA, SIS, KGB, Mafia, private individuals.
A lot of the stories could be considered Criminal Procedurals, though they are not at all that realistic. One story has him killing a target who lives on an island surrounded by bullet proof glass and no clear line of fire from a sniper perch (Golgo’s prefered method of murder.) So Golgo shoots from a helicopter, richochets the bullet off a wave in a swimming pool in the island, and hits his target right between the eyes.
The character does remind me of Parker in that he is highly skilled professional, in an immoral profession.
According to Wikipedia, that manga was first published in 1969–not long before “Lone Wolf and Cub” was first published–also about an assassin, of a different era. One would suspect neither influenced the other, given the proximity. Assassins are an old part of that nation’s culture (and many other a nation, of course).
We’re talking about a series, featuring the same assassin/hitman/whatever in story after story, but this seems worth mentioning–
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Assassination_Bureau,_Ltd
I read somewhere Kazuo Koike actually worked on Golgo 13 before he created Lone Wolf and Cub (couldn’t have been for long, though.) He also went on a created another assassin in Crying Freeman.
I always wanted to read the Assassination Bureau.
Hmm, my response doesn’t seem to have come through–try try again, I suppose.
You could say “Have Gun Will Travel” is an example of a ‘coded’ assassin series–that Adult TV Western first aired in 1957, which Richard Boone as Paladin, a remarkably well-educated hired gun, who would not actually accept contracts to kill people, but who did accept money to go solve problems, and if getting the job done involved killing someone, he had no real compunctions about it. He always kills in self-defense on the show, but there’s at least once instance where it’s implied he actually assassinated a man who was terrorizing a small town. A protagonist on a TV series back then couldn’t be too morally ambiguous. There’s also “Wanted: Dead or Alive”, with Steve McQueen, where he plays a bounty hunter in the old west–and a rather atypically noble one, of course, who is just trying to bring in wanted criminals, mainly alive, but again, the code is lurking there below the surface. You could call them latent assassins.
Used to be that stories about professional assassins were pretty rare, but they’re downright commonplace these days. Stories, and of course videogames.
P.S. Anyone notice LB bears a fairly strong resemblance to a younger G. Gordon Liddy in the above author’s photo? I’ve also noticed Max Allan Collins resembles Elton John these days;-) lol
Matthew, Chris, thank you for two very interesting recommendations!
Matthew: I read the Lone Wolf and Cub series from the late 80’s, the ones Frank Miller did the covers for, and liked them quite a bit, but that seems to be the extent of my knowledge of Manga. But this character Golgo 13 seems very interesting to me since I already have a huge fascination with Criminals. So much so that all my past girlfriends called me sick for always rooting for the bad guys in action flicks;-) lol I will be checking Mr. Golgo out, rest assured.
Chris: This Assassination Bureau novel seems very intriguing to me! Lewis to London to Robert L. Fish seems a most incongruous lineage, eh? I’ve only read London’s The Cruise of the Snark, years ago, but liked it very much. I wasn’t aware he even wrote fiction of this variety. I will be checking this odd gem out, for sure.
Thanks guys! The depth of knowledge you guys and many others here at VWOP possess is amazing.
Golgo 13 is actually a lot like American comics in that it has had many hands in the pot. Takao Saito the original creator basically just edits the more modern stories. It’s also been publishing new stories for decade. This has causes a lot of variance in the stories. Some stories are good, some bad. Some are more espinoge than crime, others more crime. Golgo is portrayed as ridiculously competent, but if you just go with it the stories can be very interesting. Viz released a thirteen best of volume a few years ago, these can be gotten pretty easily. Also they also contain two complete stories so you don’t need to read them in order like a lot of manga.
I’d also recommend the manga Black Lagoon which is about a Japanese salaryman fall in with a group of pirates/smugglers in South East Asia. The series might arguebly be more action/adventure than crime, but the protagonists are criminals and so are most of the characters. Revy, the main character (a long with the salarymen Rock), is in someways more hardcore than Parker. She’s killed innocent people for no other reason than she is in a bad mood. On the other hand, she’s shown more unambiguous concern for another person than Parker ever does.
Both manga have tv series that are more less faithful to the manga. Some people actually prefer the Black Lagoon anime since the action scenes in the manga can be hard to follow.
You have to figure some of the very earliest assassin stories were about ninjas. Here’s a relatively modern series that showed up well before Golga 13–
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shinobi_no_Mono
Chris:
I read just an hour or two ago that David Mamet is working on a new Have Gun, Will Travel TV series.
Dave:
The first Destroyer novel was written several years before it was published and would have predated the other assassins mentioned in this thread had it come out back then. Remo and Chiun do work for the government, but as hired guns. Chiun, at least, would happily take his talents elsewhere if CURE stopped paying the bills. So maybe that sort of counts.
Mack Bolan is quite certainly a hitman, but not for hire by anybody. I think we see fiction edging closer and closer to what is, after all, a pretty niche concept–a series of stories about a person who kills for a living.
And I doubt very much Mamet’s reworking of HGWT will work on any level–that was a concept very much of its era, and there are no Richard Boone’s out there (oh, and the TV western is dead, no matter how many times they try to reanimate the corpse).
Hey, remember when he was a serious playwright? Can you imagine Eugene O’Neill working on a project like that? A Hollywood producer once cabled him an offer to write a screenplay, and asked him to reply in 20 words or less. The return cable read ‘No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. O’Neill.’
Mamet’s reply would be “How much? How much? How much? How much? How much? How much? How much? How much? How much? OK. Mamet.”
;)
So are we going to be hearing Paladin using the F-word?
Actually, a lot of Western heros were borderline hitmen. The ones who were gunslingers and not lawmen of some sort. Of course, the real guns for hire pretty much were hitmen in the real Old West. Hollywood would later make movies were sociopaths like John Wesley Hardin were portrayed as heroes.
From what I understand, in the first Destroyer, Remo was pretty much Matt Helm with karate training. The third one is where it Destroyer really found it’s voice.
Seems like every other episode of Gunsmoke would be about some gunslinger hired to bump somebody off, and since Gunsmoke switched POV’s a lot, the hired killer might very well be the protagonist of that episode–but he’d either be dead or reformed by the end of the episode, and you’d never see him again. That was a very hardboiled western series, more than most people realize–a lot more dark endings than happy ones. The original concept was “Philip Marlowe in the Old West”, but the original radio show with William Conrad as Matt Dillon was probably more Hammett than Chandler.
Matthew: Black Lagoon sounds right up my alley. I like the premise very much. Apparently one of my initial misgivings about Manga, that they were primarily for children, was patently false.
Trent: I considered Remo, but his working for CURE negated his inclusion. I remembered Wilford Brimley playing the Director in the 80’s film;-) lol I hear quite wonderful things about the Destroyer series. I have to admit I always thought they were fluff like most of the Men’s Action PBs of the 70’s. (The standard of writing for most of these series was uniformly horrible.) But apparently many knowledgeable folk think The Destroyer is of a higher quality. I’ll have to take a shot and read one soon.
Chris: Mamet is one of my favorite writers. House of Games, The Spanish Prisoner, Glengarry Glen Ross, Edmond, etc., wonderful, wonderful films. Plus he wrote and directed one of my all-time favorite Criminal Procedural films called Heist. I rave about that film anytime I can, it’s one of the best crime films of all time, in my opinion. I guess he is a matter of taste. Some people are really turned off by his dialogue, which, like Michael Mann’s, is highly stylized. I love it.
I’m a huge fan of the Destroyer series. With over 150 titles it’s hit or miss of course, and some ghostwriters are better than others, but the best stuff is tremendous fun.
One secret is the characters. Remo, Chiun, and Harold W. Smith are all unique and vividly portrayed, and they have great chemistry–the movie captured some of that vibe, even though it suffered because the villain was lame. The other secret is well-deployed dry humor, something not usually associated with men’s adventure novels.
If you’ve seen the movie, you probably know enough of the background story to skip #1 and go straight to #3, Chinese Puzzle, one of the very best of the series and the one where the Warren Murphy and Richard Sapir really started clicking.
Much of the series is available for Kindle for $0.99. There is also a “best-of” omnibus that would make a decent intro. It includes Chinese Puzzle.
The Best of the Destroyer
Matthew: These two series look freaking awesome!
Wow, I am ordering a few volumes of each from Amazon. If they are half as good as the descriptions I’ve been reading, I won’t be disappointed. Golgo 13 looks something like a Japanese Parker in the images I’ve seen. I don’t mind the apparently surreal nature of some of his adventures; after all, I’m a fan of Paco Ignacio Taibo’s novels, and there’s a lot of that in his books.
As far as Black Lagoon, that fits into my fascination–somewhat bizarre fascination, I’ve been told–with smugglers, Pirates, Soldiers of Fortune. Hey, what can I say? I hail from a state which was originally named Rogue’s Isle;-) lol Some of it must be in my blood.
Seriously, huge thank you for the heads-up on these Manga series! I was dead wrong about Manga, and I plan to rectify that issue and start delving into this genre immediately.
Which volumes did you order. You can read the Golgo 13s in any order, but Black Lagoon has continuing story arcs?
Generally, manga seen as always for adutls, even the stuff that is actually is for kids. The Japanese accept a greater degree of violence and sex in children’s material than we American’s do.
That said a lot of what is publish in America is shonen or stories for young boys. Some this is actually pretty good, but a lot of it is just plain stupid. Dragonball Z, Bleach, Yu Yu Hakusho are stories primarily made up of long dragged out fight scenes with little to no plot. It’s probably best to stay away from those.
Matthew: Thanks for the warning; I’ll skip those titles while I am learning about Manga and discerning which series seem interesting to me.
Trent: I’m going to download Chinese Puzzle and Murder’s Shield and give Remo and the Gang a shot. If I like them, it’s good to know I have a LOT of books to look forward to. Considering that some of these were ghost-written, I’ll make an allowence for ocassional quality disparity.
I should also thank again the awesome VWOP poster who directed me to the wonderful novel The Prone Gunman by Jean Patrick Manchette, a terrific Noir about Martin Terrier, Assassin, and the Graphic Novel adaptation Like A Sniper Lining Up His Shot by Manchette and Jacques Tardi. Both superb works–highly recommended! There’s also a film adaptation called Le Choc (English: The Shock) featuring great Noir actor Alain Delon and the beautiful Catherine Deneuve (anyone remember her in The Hunger? Yummy!;-) lol
Anyone seriously interested in Assassin Lit/Film should check these out, as well as a masterpiece featuring Delon called Le Samourai (English: The Samurai).
I think I probably should mention Barry Eisler’s John Rain series starting with Rain Fall. The books are about an assassin that specializes in making his kills look like death by natural causes. They are somewhat of an espinoge/crime mix up.
I ordered Golgo 13 Vol. 1, 2 by Takao Saito and Black Lagoon Vol 1, 2 by Rei Hiroe. I got a pretty good deal on them through Amazon’s affiliate sellers program. I assumed each volume would be a collection of ealier published individual issues which complete a story arc. Are these volumes a good start?
Eisler’s John Rain series sounds vaguely familiar. I have to check that out.
They are. The thing about manga collections is that they just contain a just a certain number of chapters so the second volume of Black Lagoon ends in a middle of the storyline. All the Golgo 13 volumes contain complete stories though.
I should probably mention that all manga panels read right to left which might be disconcerting before you get the trick of it.
BTW, since we’re on the subject of Graphic Novels, has anyone read The Hot Rock Graphic Novel by LAX? He draws Dortmunder kind of odd-looking, not really how I picture him. I picture Dortmunder looking somewhat like the actor Harry Dean Stanton when he was younger.
BTW, Matthew, I came across this listing on Wiki about Crime Manga. I spotted a few that feature assassins, drug couriers, etc. Are you familiar with any of these well enough to recommend?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Crime_anime_and_manga
Let’s see. Cowboy Bebop is anime tv series and while there is a manga it’s the television that you want to spend time on. It’s really a mixture of crime with science fiction and westerns (among other things.) It’s also probably my all time favorite tv show. It’s about Bounty Hunters in space. The series is hilarious at times and sad at others. It has great action scenes and probably the best sound track of any tv show ever produced. The DVDs can cost you though. Adult Swim (Cartoon Network’s late night adult oriented programing) has been showing it off and on for years, but it’s currently off.
I’ve also scene Noir which is a great mix of crime, conspiracy theory, and implied lesbianism. It’s about two female assassins with mysterious pasts. The animation is not that great, but the story is very good. There’s no manga, it’s just a tv show. Funimation, the American company that bought the rights, uploaded it Youtube so you can watch for free.
I’ve read Gunsmith Cats. It’s okay. The stories are decent. It includes a lot of nude scenes including on some rather young girls (and one girl who looks younger than she is.) Aside from the pedovibe, it’s decent enough.
Crying Freeman was by the same creator as Lone Wolf and Cub. I loved Lone Wolf but did not like Crying Freeman, but I’ve only read the first volume and it might improve in later ones.
I’ve not read Old Boy, but I’ve heard a lot of good things about it.
Thanks for the rundown on these titles, Matthew. It’ll help decide what I go after next.
The left to right thing shouldn’t be too hard. I once tried to learn to read Spanish so I could read a bunch of novels by Manuel Vasquez Montalban and Paco Ignacio Taibo that hadn’t ever been translated. I gave it a good shot, but alas I only retained enough to probably give someone directions or order a meal in a Mexican restaurant;-) lol The novels are still in my bookshelf, waiting.
Lawrence Block/Matt Scudder fans are probably already aware of this but Liam Neeson will be portraying Scudder in a film version of “A Walk Among the Tombstones”:
http://screenrant.com/liam-neeson-walk-among-tombstones-niall-172672/
This Keller series sounds great! I will add it to my ever lengthening list of must reads.
Totally freaking awesome! Was not aware of this, Clue.
Dave,
The Destroyer series is pretty cool. I read a bunch of them when they first came out in the 70’s. Lot’s of action and humor and they were pretty hip for that time as I recall.
When I first posted on this site and the Parker Yahoo Group after becoming so captivated by the Parker novels, I made comments in which I lumped The Destroyer books with lots of the other adventure type series I read in the 70’s (The Executioner, The Penetrator, Death Merchant etc). I was quickly put in my place by Trent and a couple others who reminded me Remo & Chiun were a cut above the rest. Indeed they were.
I read the first 20 Destroyer’s. I believe Chinese Puzzle was the first one I read, then backtracked to read Created, The Destroyer and Death Check. I read the next 17 in order as they were released. My favorite was the 10th book, Terror Squad.
Of course, as I read them, I imagined The Destroyer as a movie franchise. I even thought up a pre-titles opening sequence that would be shown in each film (ala the Bond gun barrel sequence): the camera perspective is that of a villain as Remo runs toward him and launches a jumping karate kick while “Remo’s Theme” plays! I can still envision that sequence and hear that music to this day!
By the late 70’s I was off into other stuff and never went back but I definitely have fond memories of those books.
I somehow never got around to reading the Destroyer novels–used to look at the covers when I was browsing in bookstores as a kid. I have no memory of ever seeing a Parker novel for sale back then–maybe I was browsing in the wrong section.
Btw, Nick himself may have already provided us with the earliest instance of a series of books with an assassin as protagonist (and hero)–not a professional, he fails in his missions, there were only two novels, and the second was published four decades after the first, but still–
http://existentialennui.blogspot.com/2012/03/book-review-sequel-to-rogue-male-rogue.html
Block himself wrote a novel about a group of American mercenaries sent to Cuba to assassinate Fidel Castro, that was published under a pseudonym in 1961 (recently reprinted by Hard Case Crime). Unlike most other accounts of fictional attempts to bump off historical figures who didn’t actually get bumped off–well, that would be telling. ;)
Rogue Male was one of the great British thrillers. I have not read the sequel. Then novel manage to be quite literary while still being a thrilling adventure story.
Chris,
I DO remember seeing the Berkley edition Parker novels in the 70’s. I remember seeing The Outfit with the movie pic’s on the back and wondering why this series was being made into a movie but none of the books I was reading were! It wasn’t enough to inspire me to read the Parker’s at that time though. It did, however, lead me to this great website nearly 30 years later.
It’s POSSIBLE I saw some of the Berkleys, but the covers for those were not all that visually distinctive–that style of artwork isn’t right for Parker. I would have remembered seeing the Gold Medals done by Robert E. McGinnis, but I was too young when those were on the revolving racks at drugstores and such. :)
Btw, still trying to figure out what the woman in the bikini is doing on the cover of the Berkley edition of “Slayground.” :)
Your recommendation is a huge plus, Clue. Your opinion means a lot to me because we love a lot of the same stuff, book/film wise.
Chris, here’s a coincidence: I just downloaded Killing Castro a few days ago! I have a few titles to get through before getting to it, though. Currently reading Handsome Harry, a fictional autobiography of Harry Pierpont, famous Bank Robber of the 20’s and Dillinger associate by the wonderful James Carlos Blake.
Rogue Male: I’ve seen Nick’s review. I thought the protagonist’s mottivation was some insane attempt to find a higher quality of game to stalk, not assassination for financial gain. I’ll have to go back and reread the review.
Btw, I highly respect your opinion as well, Chris. You have very good taste in books/film and you were the guy who pointed me to the Ripley series, via your girlfriend, of course. Thanks to both of you because I found the novels quite good.
Actually, the protagonist of Rogue Male does not get payed so he really doesn’t count. In the beginning of the book, he says he was just trying to see if he can get position to kill a great man (never named, but implied to be Hitler.) It turns out he’s an unreliable narrator and he’s not telling the truth about everything, but his real motives have nothing to do with monetary gain.
I said specifically he’s not a professional, but neither was John Wilkes Booth, and we remember him as an assassin. I think what you want is the first series of stories about a hitman (or woman). All hitters are assassins, but not all assassins are hitters. The protagonist of Rogue Male sets out to assassinate a dictator, and that he’s acting as an amateur (and isn’t even sure that he’ll pull the trigger) is beside the point. Assassinations are not only carried out for monetary reasons, and most of the really famous ones weren’t. Bear in mind that I say this as somebody who thinks Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone–because all the evidence says that he did. Whether you’re trying to assassinate somebody for money, revenge, politics, or to impress Jodie Foster, you are an assassin regardless. Even if you fail.
One of the running jokes in The Destroyer books is that one of the reasons Chiun holds America in contempt is that all it’s famous assassinations were done by amateurs. The killing itself does not bother Chiun just that it wasn’t done by professionals.
Thing about amateurs is that so much of the time they have beginner’s luck. :-|
I’ve been loinokg for a post like this for an age
Yeah, I should clarify what I meant: I’m of the opinion the Quarry books are the first series of books about a hitman/assassin, whose primary incentive is financial. Assassin is rather vague, I guess. Hitman is probably more accurate, although the term Hitman usually brings Mafia baggage along with it, and some Hitmen don’t exclusively work for the Mob–I imagine certain factions of our Government hire men on a freelance basis as assassins, and those men probably don’t care a whit about political or idealogical considerations.
I tend to doubt our government hires freelancers to kill people here–too much chance of exposure. Overseas, quite possibly. Domestically, you probably want a G. Gordon Liddy type–a true believer, who won’t flip if he’s caught, as a freelancer certainly would. Btw, G. Gordon Liddy was in the audience at my sister’s college graduation–two of her classmates were his kids. He looked like a normal dad, only–you know–not normal. Oh, and a total drama queen–he ran up to the podium to stand next to them when they got their diplomas. THEY’RE the ones graduating, Gordon. :)
It does sound like the Quarry books are the first instance of assassination being treated as a job, pure and simple–the same cold ruthless professionalism we see from Parker, but in a different field. No attempt to romanticize it, no attempt to distance the audience from vicariously participating in the killing.
Parker would never accept a contract on someone’s life, of course–to him, that’s courting the road to the electric chair, or worse–life in prison. You can’t make murder the answer to everything. It’s just the answer to SOME things.
But I will have to check those books out sometime.
I think you’d like Quarry, Chris. Oddly enough, he reminds me of Parker more than Collins’ Nolan character, who was an unabashed literary hybrid of Parker and Ennis Willie’s Sand character.
Btw, there is a Quarry film out, The Last Lullaby, available on Amazon Instant Video to rent for like 3 bucks. MAC co-wrote the screenplay. Time Sizemore plays Quarry, named Price in the movie. (MAC didn’t want the name Quarry used in case the filmmakers tried to make a sequel without his input.)
*Tom Sizemore, not Time Sizemore, obviously. That’s it. My brain has officially signed off for the night. Adios, Amigos;-) lol
Chris: Oswald was the Lone Gunman…!?? Really?! Please, please read Crossfire by Jim Marrs. I really, really think you’re missing the boat on this one.
Sorry, I think I confused Rogue Male with The Deadliest Game–my bad.
* Uggh, meant The Most Dangerous Game. Brain is operating at half speed today;-) lol
Thank You
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