Hit Parade by
Lawrence Block
hbk out August 06
Published by Orion
at £16.99
A new Lawrence Block is something to be savoured with relish, as one
knows that it is going to be good. This is a new Keller story – or really,
series of stories run together. Keller is New York hit-man, a very civilised
chap who does a few contract jobs a year, always away from his home city.
He gets the jobs through Dorothy, a middle-aged lady in White Plains, who
does all the business with the clients for half the appreciable fee.
In this book, Keller is very keen for more business, mainly because his new
hobby, collecting stamps, has eaten into the savings he had amassed for his
retirement.
The jobs that appear in the story are mainly in the sporting field – about
which Keller knows nothing, but obliged to travel the length and breadth
of the United States following a baseball team, as a major player has
outlived his usefulness, but his multi-million dollar contract cannot be
terminated except by sudden death. Then he has to deal with a jockey who is
mixed up in fixed-races, then a basket-ball-playing victim, followed by a
keen golfer who needs to be taken out, even though he lives in a citadel-like
golfing estate. The last problem concerns a dog – but you'll have to read that
one for yourself!
Though a continuous novel, the stories are sharply demarcated and in two
places the occupation and hobby of Keller is restated, almost as if parts of
the book started out as short stories and have slipped under the editor's eagle
eye.
Mr Block is of course a superb writer and though I resent US authors
elbowing their way into sixty-percent of British book sales, I have to admit
that along with Ed McBain, he is my favourite. His throw-away philosophy
and his Stanley-knife-sharp observation of every-day life are a constant
delight. I like his Bernie the Burglar books best of all, but only because the
Keller stories, though equally well crafted, have this worrying under-current
of distorted morality, in that this nice philatelist, with whom you cannot help
identifying, at frequent intervals casually kills man or woman, even when he
gets to know them well. Probably L.Block does this deliberately, knowing
that the unease he generates makes the novels all the more memorable.
(
Bernard Knight
ex Home Office Pathologist and author of the highly acclaimed Crowner John series)
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Hit Parade by
Lawrence Block
