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Billy Summers
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Table of Contents
Listen To An Excerpt
About The Book
Chances are, if you’re a target of Billy Summers, two immutable truths apply: You’ll never even know what hit you, and you’re really getting what you deserve. He’s a killer for hire and the best in the business—but he’ll do the job only if the assignment is a truly bad person. But now, time is catching up with him, and Billy wants out. Before he can do that though, there’s one last hit, which promises a generous payday at the end of the line even as things don’t seem quite on the level here. Given that Billy is among the most talented snipers in the world, a decorated Iraq war vet, and a virtual Houdini when it comes to vanishing after the job is done, what could possibly go wrong? How about everything.
Part war story and part love letter to small-town America and the people who live there, this spectacular thriller of luck, fate, and love will grip readers with its electrifying narrative, as a complex antihero with one last shot at redemption must avenge the crimes of an extraordinarily evil man. You won’t ever forget this stunning novel from master storyteller Stephen King…and you will never forget Billy.
Excerpt
Billy Summers sits in the hotel lobby, waiting for his ride. It’s Friday noon. Although he’s reading a digest-sized comic book called Archie’s Pals ’n’ Gals, he’s thinking about Émile Zola, and Zola’s third novel, his breakthrough, Thérèse Raquin. He’s thinking it’s very much a young man’s book. He’s thinking that Zola was just beginning to mine what would turn out to be a deep and fabulous vein of ore. He’s thinking that Zola was—is—the nightmare version of Charles Dickens. He’s thinking that would make a good thesis for an essay. Not that he’s ever written one.
At two minutes past twelve the door opens and two men come into the lobby. One is tall with black hair combed in a 50s pompadour. The other is short and bespectacled. Both are wearing suits. All of Nick’s men wear suits. Billy knows the tall one from out west. He’s been with Nick a long time. His name is Frank Macintosh. Because of the pomp, some of Nick’s men call him Frankie Elvis, or—now that he has a tiny bald spot in back—Solar Elvis. But not to his face. Billy doesn’t know the other one. He must be local.
Macintosh holds out his hand. Billy rises and shakes it.
“Hey, Billy, been awhile. Good to see you.”
“Good to see you too, Frank.”
“This is Paulie Logan.”
“Hi, Paulie.” Billy shakes with the short one.
“Pleased to meet you, Billy.”
Macintosh takes the Archie digest from Billy’s hand. “Still reading the comics, I see.”
“Yeah,” Billy says. “Yeah. I like them quite a bit. The funny ones. Sometimes the superheroes but I don’t like them as much.”
Macintosh breezes through the pages and shows something to Paulie Logan. “Look at these chicks. Man, I could jack off to these.”
“Betty and Veronica,” Billy says, taking the comic back. “Veronica is Archie’s girlfriend and Betty wants to be.”
“You read books, too?” Logan asks.
“Some, if I’m going on a long trip. And magazines. But mostly comic books.”
“Good, good,” Logan says, and drops Macintosh a wink. Not very subtle, and Macintosh frowns, but Billy’s okay with it.
“You ready to take a ride?” Macintosh asks.
“Sure.” Billy tucks his digest into his back pocket. Archie and his bosomy gal pals. There’s an essay waiting to be written there, too. About the comfort of haircuts and attitudes that don’t change. About Riverdale, and how time stands still there.
“Then let’s go,” Macintosh says. “Nick’s waiting.”
2
Macintosh drives. Logan says he’ll sit in back because he’s short. Billy expects them to go west, because that’s where the fancy part of this town is, and Nick Majarian likes to live large whether home or away. And he doesn’t do hotels. But they go northeast instead.
Two miles from downtown they enter a neighborhood that looks lower middle-class to Billy. Three or four steps better than the trailer park he grew up in, but far from fancy. No big gated houses, not here. This is a neighborhood of ranch houses with lawn sprinklers twirling on small patches of grass. Most are one-story. Most are well maintained, but a few need paint and there’s crabgrass taking over some of the lawns. He sees one house with a piece of cardboard blocking a broken window. In front of another, a fat man in Bermuda shorts and a wifebeater sits in a lawn chair from Costco or Sam’s Club, drinking a beer and watching them go by. Times have been good in America for awhile now, but maybe that is going to change. Billy knows neighborhoods like this. They are a barometer, and this one has started to go down. The people who live here are working the kind of jobs where you punch a clock.
Macintosh pulls into the driveway of a two-story with a patchy lawn. It’s painted a subdued yellow. It’s okay, but doesn’t look like a place where Nick Majarian would choose to live, even for a few days. It looks like the kind of place a machinist or lower-echelon airport employee would live with his coupon-clipping wife and two kids, making mortgage payments every month and bowling in a beer league on Thursday nights.
Logan opens Billy’s door. Billy puts his Archie digest on the dashboard and gets out.
Macintosh leads the way up the porch steps. It’s hot outside but inside it’s air conditioned. Nick Majarian stands in the short hallway leading down to the kitchen. He’s wearing a suit that probably cost almost as much as a monthly mortgage payment on this house. His thinning hair is combed flat, no pompadour for him. His face is round and Vegas tanned. He’s heavyset, but when he pulls Billy into a hug, that protruding belly feels as hard as stone.
“Billy!” Nick exclaims, and kisses him on both cheeks. Big hearty smacks. He’s wearing a million-dollar grin. “Billy, Billy, man, it’s good to see you!”
“Good to see you, too, Nick.” He looks around. “You usually stay somewhere fancier than this.” He pauses. “If you don’t mind me saying.”
Nick laughs. He has a beautiful infectious laugh to go with the grin. Macintosh joins in and Logan smiles. “I got a place over on the West Side. Short-term. House-sitting, you could call it. There’s a fountain in the front yard. Got a naked little kid in the middle of it, there’s a word for that…”
Cherub, Billy thinks but doesn’t say. He just keeps smiling.
“Anyway, a little kid peeing water. You’ll see it, you’ll see it. No, this one isn’t mine, Billy. It’s yours. If you decide to take the job, that is.”
3
Nick shows him around. “Fully furnished,” he says, like he’s selling it. Maybe he sort of is.
This one has a second floor where there are three bedrooms and two bathrooms, the second small, probably for the kids. On the first floor there’s a kitchen, a living room, and a dining room that’s so small it’s actually a dining nook. Most of the cellar has been converted into a long carpeted room with a big TV at one end and a Ping-Pong table at the other. Track lighting. Nick calls it the rumpus room, and this is where they sit.
Macintosh asks them if they’d like something to drink. He says there’s soda, beer, lemonade, and iced tea.
“I want an Arnold Palmer,” Nick says. “Half and half. Lots of ice.”
Billy says that sounds good. They make small talk until the drinks come. The weather, how hot it is down here in the border south. Nick wants to know how Billy’s trip in was. Billy says it was fine but doesn’t say where he flew in from and Nick doesn’t ask. Nick says how about that fuckin Trump and Billy says how about him. That’s about all they’ve got, but it’s okay because by then Macintosh is back with two tall glasses on a tray, and once he leaves, Nick gets down to business.
“When I called your man Bucky, he tells me you’re hoping to retire.”
“I’m thinking about it. Been at it a long time. Too long.”
“Truth. How old are you, anyway?”
“Forty-four.”
“Been doing this ever since you took off the uniform?”
“Pretty much.” He’s pretty sure Nick knows all this.
“How many in all?”
Billy shrugs. “I don’t exactly remember.” It’s seventeen. Eighteen, counting the first one, the man with the cast on his arm.
“Bucky says you might do one more if the price was right.”
He waits for Billy to ask. Billy doesn’t, so Nick resumes.
“The price on this one is very right. You could do it and spend the rest of your life someplace warm. Drinking piña coladas in a hammock.” He busts out the big grin again. “Two million. Five hundred thousand up front, the rest after.”
Billy’s whistle isn’t part of the act, which he doesn’t think of as an act but as his dumb self, the one he shows to guys like Nick and Frank and Paulie. It’s like a seatbelt. You don’t use it because you expect to be in a crash, but you never know who you might meet coming over a hill on your side of the road. This is also true on the road of life, where people veer all over the place and drive the wrong way on the turnpike.
“Why so much?” The most he’s ever gotten on a contract was seventy K. “It’s not a politician, is it? Because I don’t do that.”
“Not even close.”
“Is it a bad person?”
Nick laughs, shakes his head, and looks at Billy with real affection. “Always the same question with you.”
Billy nods.
The dumb self might be a shuck, but this is true: he only does bad people. It’s how he sleeps at night. It goes without saying that he has made a living working for bad people, yes, but Billy doesn’t see this as a moral conundrum. He has no problem with bad people paying to have other bad people killed. He basically sees himself as a garbageman with a gun.
“This is a very bad person.”
“Okay…”
“And it’s not my two mill. I’m just the middleman here, getting what you could call an agenting fee. Not a piece of yours, mine’s on the side.” Nick leans forward, hands clasped between his thighs. His expression is earnest. His eyes are fixed on Billy’s. “The target is a pro shooter, like you. Only this guy, he never asks if it’s a bad person or a good person. He doesn’t make those distinctions. If the money’s right, he does the job. For now we’ll call him Joe. Six years ago, or maybe it was seven, it don’t matter, this guy Joe took out a fifteen-year-old kid on his way to school. Was the kid a bad person? No. In fact he was an honor student. But someone wanted to send the kid’s dad a message. The kid was the message. Joe was the messenger.”
Billy wonders if the story is true. It might not be, it has a fairy tale fabulism to it, but it somehow feels true. “You want me to hit a hitter.” Like he’s getting it straight in his mind.
“Nailed it. Joe’s in a Los Angeles lockup now. Men’s Central. Charged with assault and attempted rape. The attempted rape thing, tell you what, if you’re not a Me Too chick, it’s sorta funny. He mistook this lady writer who was in LA for a conference, feminist lady writer, for a hooker. He propositioned her—a bit on the hard side, I’d guess—and she pepper-sprayed him. He popped her one in the teeth and dislocated her jaw. She probably sold another hundred thousand books out of that. Should have thanked him instead of charging him, don’t you think?”
Billy doesn’t reply.
“Come on, Billy, think about it. The man’s offed God knows how many guys, some of them very hard guys, and he gets pepper-sprayed by a dyke women’s libber? You gotta see the humor in that.”
Billy gives a token smile. “LA’s on the other side of the country.”
“That’s right, but he was here before he went there. I don’t know why he was here and don’t care, but I know he was looking for a poker game and someone told him where he could find one. Because see, our pal Joe fancies himself a high roller. Long story short, he lost a lot of money. When the big winner came out around five in the morning, Joe shot him in the gut and took back not just his money but all the money. Someone tried to stop him, probably another moke who was in the game, and Joe shot him, too.”
“He kill both of them?”
“Big winner died in the hospital, but not before he ID’d Joe. Guy who tried to intervene pulled through. He also ID’d Joe. You know what else?”
Billy shakes his head.
“Security footage. You see where this is going?”
Billy does, absolutely. “Not really.”
“California’s got him for assault. Which’ll stick. The attempted rape would probably get thrown out, it’s not like he dragged her into an alley or anything, in fact he fucking offered to pay her, so it’s just solicitation, DA won’t even bother about that. With time served, he might get ninety days in county. Debt paid. But here it’s murder, and they take that very serious on this side of the Mississippi.”
Billy knows it. In the red states they put stone killers out of their misery. He has no problem with that.
“And after looking at the security footage, the jury would almost certainly decide to give old Joey the needle. You see that, right?”
“Sure.”
“He’s using his lawyer to fight extradition, no big surprise there. You know what extradition is, right?”
“Sure.”
“Okay. Joe’s lawyer is fighting it for all he’s worth, and the guy ain’t no ambulance chaser. He’s already got a thirty-day delay on a hearing, and he’ll use it to figure out other ways to stall, but in the end he’s gonna lose. And Joe’s in an isolation cell, because somebody tried to stick a shiv into him. Old Joey took it away and broke his wrist for him, but where there’s one guy with a shiv, there could be a dozen.”
“Gang thing?” Billy asks. “Crips, maybe? They got a beef with him?”
Nick shrugs. “Who knows? For now, Joe’s got his own private quarters, doesn’t have to get slopped with the rest of the hogs, gets thirty minutes in the yard all by his lonesome. Also meantime, the lawyer-man is reaching out to people. The message he’s sending is that this guy will talk about something very big unless he can get a pass on the murder charge.”
“Could that happen?” Billy doesn’t like to think so, even if the man this Joe killed after the poker game was a bad person. “The prosecutors might take the death penalty off the table, or maybe even step it down to second-degree, or something?”
“Not bad, Billy. You’re on the right track, at least. But what I’m hearing is that Joe wants all the charges dismissed. He must be holding some high cards.”
“He thinks he can trade something to get away with murder.”
“Says the guy who got away with it God knows how many times,” Nick says, and laughs.
Billy doesn’t. “I never shot anyone because I lost money in a poker game. I don’t play poker. And I don’t rob.”
Nick nods vigorously. “I know that, Billy. Just bad people. I was only busting your chops a bit. Drink your drink.”
Billy drinks his drink. He’s thinking, Two million. For one job. And he’s thinking, What’s the catch?
“Someone must really want to stop this guy from giving up whatever he’s got.”
Nick points a finger gun at him like Billy has made an amazing leap of deduction. “You know it. Anyway, I get a message from this local guy, you’ll meet him if you take the job, and the message is we’re looking for a pro shooter who’s the best of the best. I think that’s Billy Summers, case fuckin closed.”
“You want me to do this guy, but not in LA. Here.”
“Not me. I’m just the middleman, remember. It’s someone else. Someone with very deep pockets.”
“What’s the catch?”
Nick turns on the grin. He points another finger gun at Billy. “Straight to the point, right? Straight to the fuckin point. Except it’s not really a catch. Or maybe it is, depending on how you feel. It’s time, you see. You’re going to be here…”
He waves his hand to indicate the little yellow house. Maybe the neighborhood it sits in, as well—the one Billy will discover is called Midwood. Maybe the whole city, which sits east of the Mississippi and just below the Mason-Dixon Line.
“… for quite awhile.”
4
They talk some more. Nick tells Billy that the location is set, by which he means the place Billy will shoot from. He says Billy doesn’t have to decide until he sees it and hears more. Billy will get that from Ken Hoff. He’s the local guy. Nick says Ken is out of town today.
“Does he know what I use?” This isn’t the same as saying he’s in, but it’s a big step in that direction. Two million for mostly sitting around on his ass, then taking one shot. Hard to turn down a deal like that.
Nick nods.
“Okay, when do I meet this Hoff guy?”
“Tomorrow. He’ll give you a call at your hotel tonight, time and place.”
“If I do it, I’ll need some kind of a cover story for why I’m here.”
“All worked out, and it’s a beaut. Giorgio’s idea. We’ll tell you tomorrow night, after you meet with Hoff.” Nick rises. He sticks out his hand. Billy shakes it. He has shaken with Nick before and never likes it because Nick is a bad guy. Hard not to like him a little, though. Nick is also a pro, and that grin works.
5
Paulie Logan drives him back to the hotel. Paulie doesn’t talk much. He asks Billy if he minds the radio, and when Billy says no, Paulie puts on a soft rock station. At one point he says, “Loggins and Messina, they’re the best.” Except for cursing at a guy who cuts him off on Cedar Street, that’s the extent of his conversation.
Billy doesn’t mind. He’s thinking of all the movies he’s seen about robbers who are planning one last job. If noir is a genre, then “one last job” is a sub-genre. In those movies, the last job always goes bad. Billy isn’t a robber and he doesn’t work with a gang and he’s not superstitious, but this last job thing nags at him just the same. Maybe because the price is so high. Maybe because he doesn’t know who’s paying the tab, or why. Maybe it’s even the story Nick told about how the target once took out a fifteen-year-old honor student.
“You stickin around?” Paulie asks when he pulls the car into the hotel’s forecourt. “Because this guy Hoff will get you the tool you need. I could have done it myself, but Nick said no.”
Is he sticking around? “Don’t know. Maybe.” He pauses getting out. “Probably.”
6
In his room, Billy powers up his laptop. He changes the time stamp and checks his VPN, because hackers love hotels. He could try googling Los Angeles County courts, extradition hearings have got to be matters of public record, but there are simpler ways to get what he wants. And he wants. Ronald Reagan had a point when he said trust but verify.
Billy goes to the LA Times website and pays for a six-month subscription. He uses a credit card that belongs to a fictitious person named Thomas Hardy, Hardy being Billy’s favorite writer. Of the naturalist school, anyway. Once in, he searches for feminist writer and adds attempted rape. He finds half a dozen stories, each smaller than the last. There’s a picture of the feminist writer, who looks hot and has a lot to say. The alleged attack took place in the forecourt of the Beverly Hills Hotel. The alleged perpetrator was discovered to be in possession of multiple IDs and credit cards. According to the Times, his real name is Joel Randolph Allen. He beat a rape charge in Massachusetts in 2012.
So Joe was pretty close, Billy thinks.
Next he goes to the website of this city’s newspaper, once again uses Thomas Hardy to get through the paywall, and searches for murder victim poker game.
The story is there, and the security photo that runs with it is pretty damning. An hour earlier the light wouldn’t have been good enough to show the doer’s face, but the time stamp on the bottom of the photo is 5:18 AM. The sun isn’t up but it’s getting there, and the face of the guy standing in the alley is as clear as you’d want, if you were a prosecutor. He’s got his hand in his pocket, he’s waiting outside a door that says LOADING ZONE DO NOT BLOCK, and if Billy was on the jury, he’d probably vote for the needle just on the basis of that. Because Billy Summers is an expert when it comes to premeditation, and that’s what he’s looking at right here.
The most recent story in the Red Bluff paper says that Joel Allen has been arrested on unrelated charges in Los Angeles.
Billy is sure that Nick believes he takes everything at face value. Like everyone else Billy has worked for over the years he’s been doing this, Nick believes that outside of his awesome sniper skills, Billy is a little slow, maybe even on the spectrum. Nick believes the dumb self, because Billy is at great pains not to overdo it. No gaping mouth, no glazed eyes, no outright stupidity. An Archie comic book does wonders. The Zola novel he’s been reading is buried deep in his suitcase. And if someone searched his case and discovered it? Billy would say he found it left in the pocket of an airline seat and picked it up because he liked the girl on the cover.
He thinks about looking for the fifteen-year-old honor student, but there isn’t enough info. He could google that all afternoon and not find it. Even if he did, he couldn’t be sure he was looking at the right fifteen-year-old. It’s enough to know the rest of the story Nick told checks out.
He orders a sandwich and a pot of tea. When it comes, he sits by the window, eating and reading Thérèse Raquin. He thinks it’s like James M. Cain crossed with an EC horror comic from the 1950s. After his late lunch, he lies down with his hands behind his head and beneath the pillow, feeling the cool that hides there. Which, like youth and beauty, doesn’t last long. He’ll see what this Ken Hoff has to say, and if that also checks out, he thinks he will take the job. The waiting will be difficult, he’s never been good at that (tried Zen once, didn’t take), but for a two-million-dollar payday he can wait.
Billy closes his eyes and goes to sleep.
At seven that evening, he’s eating a room service dinner and watching The Asphalt Jungle on his laptop. It’s a jinxed one last job picture, for sure. The phone rings. It’s Ken Hoff. He tells Billy where they’ll meet tomorrow afternoon. Billy doesn’t have to write it down. Writing things down can be dangerous, and he’s got a good memory.
Reading Group Guide
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Introduction
Billy Summers is a top-tier assassin with a heart of gold. When the job turns out to be a setup, Billy must switch gears and rewrite his plans entirely. While he’s laying low, he suddenly gains a completely unexpected and unlikely companion who opens his heart and who becomes his future partner in vengeance. The two forge ahead together, trying to put their darkest chapters behind them and ultimately find some sort of redemption.
Topics & Questions for Discussion
1. When interacting with others, Billy takes the precaution of projecting his “dumb self,” comparing it to a seatbelt. What do you think of this method of protecting oneself? Have you, or anyone you know, done anything similar?
2. In Chapter 5, Billy plays Monopoly with his David Lockridge neighbors, the Ackermans. During the game, he explains Hobson’s Choice, which means having to “decide between taking a chance or standing pat.” In what ways does this choice manifest throughout the book?
3. As Billy continues to write the story of Benjy Compson, in reality his story, he suddenly realizes that “he wants to be read” and that “any writer who goes public with his work is courting danger. It’s part of the allure. Look at me. I’m showing you what I am. My clothes are off. I’m exposing myself.” Despite being adept at hiding his true identity, it seems he wants to be known. Discuss why Billy specifically feels this way and why writers in general may crave this type of acknowledgment.
4. As an assassin, Billy maintains several undercover identities and social lives to hide in plain sight. How might these skills translate to writing skills? What else about Billy’s background makes him a surprisingly good writer, despite his lack of experience?
5. In Chapter 6, Billy has a conversation with Colin White where Colin shows how he changes to his aggressive lawyer persona, which confuses Billy as to whether he is “a good person or a bad one.” What do you make of Billy’s tendency to think in black and white? How might he be different if he allowed for gray areas? How might the story be different?
6. As Dalton Smith, Billy gets to know Beverly and Don Jensen, the couple who lives in the apartment upstairs. After Beverly’s mother passes away and leaves them two hundred thousand dollars, they exit the active story, going on vacation long-term, which helps out Billy but also makes him think about what his pay is really worth. What did this subplot add to the story overall? How does it impact Billy?
7. Chapter 10 is when the assassination of Joel Allen takes place. Discuss your experience reading through this chapter. How did you feel while reading? Was there anything that alerted you that something might be off? Discuss how King handles the suspenseful moments and deeply engages you.
8. Billy is known among his colleagues for asking if his targets are “bad men.” Later on, he has the following exchange with Alice:
“If [Tripp] was hurt that would make me happy. I suppose that makes me a bad person.”
“It makes you human,” Billy says. “Bad people need to pay a price. And the price should be high.”
What is your opinion on Billy’s moral code? How do you feel about the way he took revenge on Alice’s rapists? Was he justified, or do his actions also make him a bad man?
9. We learn about Billy’s military background by reading sections of the story he writes. What do these sections add to your understanding of Billy overall and how does that inform your understanding of his actions in the present?
10. Clay Briggs, Billy’s military buddy, teaches Billy two methods of calming panic attacks during their time in Fallujah, which Billy passes on to Alice: placing a wet washcloth over your face and singing “The Teddy Bears’ Picnic” lyrics. Would you try these methods yourself? What do you think of the way mental health and psychological healing are dealt with in this story?
11. Bucky Hanson is mostly in the background throughout the story until Billy and Alice drive out to meet him toward the end of the novel. Billy calls him the only person he trusts completely. What is your impression of Bucky? How does King effectively make him come across as a trustworthy person. Did you ever distrust him?
12. When Billy and Alice go to confront Roger Klerke, the big bad guy of the story, Alice shoots and kills him instead of Billy. What does it mean to you that Alice is the one to take vengeance? What does this mean for the story overall?
13. Think about Billy’s final words to Alice and how he sets her up mentally and financially to begin a new life. What was your reaction to his speech? What do you think about Billy and Alice’s relationship? What kind of love did they share?
14. In the final pages of the book, Alice says, “Did you know that you could sit in front of a screen or a pad of paper and change the world? It doesn’t last, the world always comes back, but before it does, it’s awesome. It’s everything.” What do you think of this concept? Of the power of writing and storytelling? What is it worth?
Enhance Your Book Club
1. Try to write your own story. Consider writing about yourself, or rewriting something in your life you wished had gone differently. Then, be brave and share with someone what you’ve written. How did this process feel for you? Does it help you better understand Billy, or writers in general?
2. Figure out a way to practically visualize the distance of Billy’s first shot as a sniper. A football field is about a hundred yards. The first shot that Billy ever made was over thirteen times that length. Consider getting a rangefinder, or just a pair of binoculars, and find a point in the distance that might approximate that distance. Alternatively, try walking a hundred yards thirteen times. (You do not need to complete this walk if you become tired)!
3. Listen to the full “The Teddy Bears’ Picnic” song and sing along. Why do you think King chose these as the soothing lyrics Billy learns from Clay Briggs?
Product Details
- Publisher: Scribner (August 3, 2021)
- Length: 528 pages
- ISBN13: 9781982173616
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Raves and Reviews
Praise for Billy Summers
Named a Best Book of 2021 by BookBub, Booklist, Esquire, Goodreads Choice Awards, Kirkus, Parade, Scribd, Apple Books, Tampa Bay Times, and The Wall Street Journal!
“Billy Summers is an ambitious, controlled and compelling shapeshifter of a book: combat novel, platonic romance, noir caper, portrait of an artist coming of belated age. Its pleasures are numerous, and it touches the mind, heart and nervous system in equal measure."
—The Wall Street Journal
"Billy Summers is the perfect summertime treat – solidly crafted, deliciously suspenseful and surprisingly heartfelt. King plays to all his strengths: deep characterization, clever plotting and this time an ending that seems both logical and well earned… Billy Summers might be King’s most bookish thriller to date, an incisive character study wrapped inside a road novel, coupled with a very unconventional love story."
—Portland Press-Herald
“Not to put too fine a point on it, but BILLY SUMMERS is the best Stephen King novel in a while… [it] has the irresistible forward motion that’s characteristic of just about every story Stephen King ever wrote... [what] sets this book apart [is] its stylistic brilliance... I was blown away by this book... a variety of voices, sharply tuned to the personae of one character, are measured, developed and explored across a truly gripping adventure story... one of Stephen King’s masterpieces.”
—Dana Wilde, Central Maine
“A tense, absorbing story about a brainy hitman struggling to go straight — and the author’s best novel in many years... an engrossing read, deftly plotted, suitably hard-boiled, and at times almost magically imagined."
—The Los Angeles Review of Books
"King’s latest stars a killer-for-hire whose final assignment involves moving to a small Southern town and taking cover as a writer, a job that turns out to be as rewarding as killing bad guys. As for the hit, it doesn’t go so well, but that’s part of the allure of this twisty, multilayered thriller."
—The Washington Post
“A noirish, unputdownable thriller that’s also King’s best book about his own craft since On Writing.”
—People Magazine
“Multifaceted… hard-to-put-down… It’s two stories for the price of one, and King gives readers their money’s worth.”
—Amanda St. Amand, The St Louis Post-Dispatch
“King writes beautifully about both the seemingly humdrum details of small town living, the seedier backwaters of America and of the idiosyncrasies of Summers, as compelling a main character as he’s ever written…a refreshingly straightforward, often wildly entertaining and intricately plotted tale of revenge and redemption.”
—Emily Burnham, Bangor Daily News
“A testament to its author’s undimmed energy and confidence. His eye for detail, especially at the dreckier end of roadside culture, is sharp…lively and vivid.”
—The New York Times Book Review
“Among the many remarkable things about Stephen King is that he has yet to run out of ideas. Or put another way: He’s very good at finding new ways to explore themes that have interested him his entire career… The passages where Billy writes his life story are some of the best in the book… It’s when [Billy] finds an audience for his story that the book really starts to find its groove.”
—Rob Merrill, The Associated Press
“A first act of stunning formal control… a delicious engine of tension… a delightfully tense crime thriller… somehow both hard-boiled and human, and on par with much of King’s best work… King can still build tidal waves of tension from the smallest deviation from plan, sending Constant Readers plunging deep into the flop-sweat insecurities of his heroes as they watch a situation potentially spiral out of control. In situating Billy’s atonement in communication and creation, not violence, King manages to find a space for redemption… Billy Summers is winningly optimistic about the life of the creative mind. More than almost any other King book in recent memory, it’s a product of its time, but not a victim of it.”
—William Hughes, The AV Club
“Stephen King is an artist, and readers and critics who underestimate him do so at their own peril…Billy Summers is a very good story, told economically with an ear for rhythm. It’s about what it’s like to be a human being, and how that doesn’t really change much, no matter what situation you find yourself in…while there are plenty of action sequences, the heart of this novel lies in its quietest moments.”
—Philip Martin, The Northwest Arkansas Democrat Gazette
“A love letter to the transformative effects of putting words on paper…the impassioned argument Mr. King makes for the role of writing in healing traumas is heartfelt and affecting… fast-paced and cleverly constructed… written with Mr. King’s legendary eye for detail, and his ability to immerse readers in the mindsets of fictional characters serves the story well… witnessing this deeply-scarred man discover a new way of seeing himself and his place in the world is beautifully resonant. Mr. King’s sheer pleasure in the alchemy of turning mere words into entire universes is on full display here, and it is contagious — not just for Billy, but perhaps for Constant Readers as well.”
—Wendeline Wright, The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
“Stephen King hits the mark with assassination thriller Billy Summers…It’s downright unfair, really: Not only is Stephen King an undisputed master of horror, he’s a virtuosic crime novelist as well… King actually is as good at the hard-boiled prose—in this case, the tale of an extremely effective assassin trying to get out after one last job—as he is the scary stuff… King’s known for his literary villains, yet in creating his killer title protagonist, he exquisitely gets into the mind of a hitman and roots around in there to figure out what kind of person would do wetwork, the loneliness involved for those who choose that as a career path and the effect it would have on friends and loved ones… The biggest crime here, however, would be missing out on Billy Summers and King’s new reign as a pulp genius.”
—Brian Truitt, USA Today
"King’s latest endeavor begins with a familiar premise: decorated veteran Billy Summers, a principled hit man on the eve of retirement, agrees to do one last job. Things go south in spectacularly bad fashion, making for a characteristically King thriller about luck, fate, and redemption. To see the undisputed master of horror shift into the realm of noir thrillers is proof that King can still surprise and astound us, all these decades later."
—Esquire
"King has multiple novels in play here—thriller, at least two coming-of-age stories, and a knockout road novel—and he knits them together beautifully, never missing a stitch ... King has never been better than he is here at wrapping readers into a propulsive, many-tentacled narrative—complete with a perfectly orchestrated, moving ending."
—Booklist, starred
"[A] tripwire-taut thriller... King meticulously lays out the details of Billy’s trade, his Houdini-style escapes, and his act to look simpler than he is, but the novel’s main strength is a story within a story... This is another outstanding outing from a writer who consistently delivers more than his readers expect."
—Publisher's Weekly, starred
"The ever prolific King moves from his trademark horror into the realm of the hard-boiled noir thriller ... Murder most foul and mayhem most entertaining. Another worthy page-turner from a protean master."
—Kirkus, starred
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