REVIEW: ‘Hit and Run’ (A John Keller Mystery) by Lawrence Block

Hit and Run (2008) by Lawrence Block is the fourth mys­tery in the John Keller “hit man” series pub­lished by William Morrow.

I seem to have an affin­ity for anti-heroes. Dex­ter Mor­gan (Jeff Lind­say): ser­ial killer. Jack Tay­lor: self-destructive alco­holic (Ken Bruen) and now, John Keller: pro­fes­sional assas­sin (Lawrence Block).

Of course, there must be some human­ity to these guys, right? Some­thing that makes them sym­pa­thetic despite their actions being morally reprehensible.

John Keller is a pro­fes­sional hit man and he’s also a pas­sion­ate stamp col­lec­tor. He decides to do this one _last_ job in Des Moines before retir­ing with his mil­lions. The assign­ment he is given by a client known only as “Call Me Al” has been delayed x amount of times and this sets off alarm bells for Keller; and sure enough, he finds him­self set up and on the run when the gov­er­nor of Ohio is killed dur­ing a cam­paign stop in Des Moines.

Coin­ci­dence? Keller doesn’t think so and thus he begins to map his way out of the state with­out the aided help of his long-time part­ner, Dot. Run­ning low on funds, his part­ner MIA and his face plas­tered on CNN, Keller stays on the run. Much of the book fol­lows him as he tries to fig­ure out what has hap­pened and what to do next while stay­ing two steps ahead of the law.

He ends up in New Orleans think­ing it to be a brief stop but finds him­self risk­ing expo­sure when he saves a woman from being raped. The woman he saves, Julia, rec­og­nizes Keller but she doesn’t turn him in. In fact she lis­tens to his protes­ta­tions of inno­cence and she decides to believe him and aides him in fur­ther cir­cum­vent­ing the law.

The two hook up roman­ti­cally after Keller tells her his story. You felt that this was the right time for him to set­tle down, change direc­tion and Julia was the right woman for Keller and that was the best part of the book quite frankly. It was nice that Keller was seen as just a ‘reg­u­lar guy’ and his image as a ‘killer” was replaced with a lov­ing and gen­tle man. It’s like this book had two parts: Keller on the run and then Keller start­ing a new life which is what he does work­ing with Julia’s brother in the post-Katrina recon­struc­tion effort and set­tling down with his new love.

The last part of the book has Keller deal­ing with the peo­ple who set him up. We see Keller go from the lov­ing man that Julia knows to the pro­fes­sional assas­sin that he is and he takes care of business,too. That part of the book was sus­pense­ful and albeit a bit sur­pris­ing. Keller often comes across as a bit unas­sum­ing and unpre­dictable. I guess that’s what makes him good at his job.

While read­ing this book, I had no idea what would hap­pen next and so this book gets high marks for that alone. At times it seemed as if Keller’s inter­nal mono­logue was rep­e­ti­tious and bor­ing and unevent­ful and I’m sure most read­ers would inter­pret it that way. How­ever, if you stick with it, the story is actu­ally pretty good. Sure, I could have spent less time with Keller on the run but it was inter­est­ing to read his thought processes and see­ing how he sur­vives a nation­wide manhunt.

The roman­tic rela­tion­ship was a bonus and it was nicely writ­ten, too. Here is one my favorite scenes where Julia gifts Keller with one of his favorite sub­scrip­tions on col­lect­ing stamps. Keller’s stamp col­lec­tion was stolen and he laments the loss of his child­hood passion.

“There’s this shop, it’s not much more than a hole in the wall. Stamps and coins and polit­i­cal cam­paign but­tons. And other hobby items, but mostly those three. Do you know the shop I’m talk­ing about?“
He didn’t.
“And I walked in and I didn’t want to buy you stamps, because I thought that prob­a­bly wouldn’t have been a good idea-“
“You were right about that.“
“But I saw this paper, and didn’t you men­tion it once? I think you did.“
“I may have.“
“You used to read it, didn’t you?“
“I was a sub­scriber.“
“And I thought should I get it for him or not? Because I know your stamps are gone, and how much they meant to you, and this might only make you feel the loss more. But then I thought maybe you’d enjoy read­ing the arti­cles, and who knows, you might even want to, I don’t know, start another col­lec­tion, although that might be impos­si­ble after hav­ing lost every­thing. Then I thought, oh, for God’s sake, Julia, give the lit­tle man two dol­lars and fifty cents and go home. So I did.“
“So you did.“
“Now if it was a really ter­ri­ble idea,” she said, “just put it back in the bag it came in and hand it to me, and I’ll guar­entee you never have to look at it again, and we can both pre­tend this never hap­pened.“
“You’re won­der­ful”, he said. “Have I ever told you that?
“You have, but we’ve always been upstairs. This is the first time you’ve told me on the ground floor.”

I haven’t read any of the pre­vi­ous Keller books but I wasn’t lost read­ing this book so it stands alone quite well. Of course, Keller’s pla­tonic rela­tion­ship with Dot was already estab­lished in here and they get along like an old mar­ried cou­ple. I really enjoyed their back and forth and often witty conversations.

I guess when it comes down to it, each of them only had each other and trusted each other. Dot had his back and he hers. How­ever, this last assign­ment destroyed their lives and in Keller’s case, it rein­vented his com­pletely. Was I emo­tion­ally invested in Keller’s out­come? Yes, absolutely. I wanted him safe and sound with his stamp col­lec­tion after every­thing was over and done.

Keller is a com­pli­cated guy and after this last job went bust, life offers him a sec­ond chance to redeem him­self. The story con­cluded on a upbeat note and also makes me won­der if this is the _last_ Keller book. I hope not. My grade for this book would be a solid B. There were times I could put the book down and for­get it. I wouldn’t say that the plot­ting made this a com­pul­sively read­able book but it was enter­tain­ing and reward­ing for those who stick with it. Any­way, I’m glad I read it and maybe I will go back and pick up ear­lier books in the series. My grade, B.

Hit and Run (John Keller Mys­ter­ies)is avail­able as a ebook at Fic­tion­wise and Ama­zon

For Fur­ther Reading

• REVIEW: ‘Wages of Sin’ by Pene­lope Williamson
• REVIEW: ‘The Killing of the Tin­kers (A Jack Tay­lor Mys­tery)’ by Ken Bruen
• REVIEW: ‘Mon­ster’ Story & Art­work by Naoki Urasawa

Tagged as: assasin, John Keller series, Lawrence Block, mystery and suspense, professional hit man