Few mystery authors have a stable of protagonists as uniformly appealing as Lawrence Block's. Whether Block's taking the reader into PI Matthew Scudder's world of dimly lit bars and basement AA meetings, quirky burglar Bernie Rhodenbarr's used bookstore, or the international hot-spot hangouts of Evan Tanner, the spy who never sleeps, he always provides good company. John Keller, star of Block's 1998 story collection Hit Man, is a typical Block invention: an unassuming, get-the-job-done-and-move-on New York contract killer who collects stamps, does the morning crossword, eats Vietnamese takeout, and falls for the occasional woman.

When Keller gets off a plane in Louisville, ready to do the job he's been hired for, something about it feels wrong from the start. And when two people are killed in the motel room he's just vacated, he realizes he narrowly missed a setup, but can't figure out why. Then he goes to Boston to do another job, and afterwards dines in a coffee shop where another patron has the misfortune of leaving with Keller's raincoat: The Globe didn't have it. But there it was in the Herald, a small story on a back page, a man found dead on Boston Common, shot twice in the head with a small-caliber weapon.

Keller could picture the poor bastard, lying face-down on the grass, the rain washing relentlessly down on him. He could picture the dead man's coat, too. The Herald didn't say anything about a coat, but that didn't matter. Keller could picture it all the same. Keller's agent, Dot, puts the pieces--including the death of another contract killer she books occasionally--together and comes up with the seemingly crazy idea that a greedy hit man is knocking off the competition. In between other legit hits, romancing a commitment-shy artist, visiting an astrologer, and a long stint on jury duty, Keller slowly moves closer to the faceless nemesis he and Dot dub "Roger." But it's Dot, the woman of action, who figures out what to do about him. Though Hit List is too introspective to be a caper novel, and too funny to be noir, it's bound to find a rapt audience with fans of both subgenres. After two such engaging books, can Hit Parade be far behind? --Barrie Trinkle


From Publishers Weekly
John Keller, whom Block introduced in Hit Man, is a killer for hire, with a difference. He's thoughtful, even broody, tends to take a liking to some of the towns where he goes to do his work, dreams of perhaps settling down in one of them one day and collects stamps in his spare time, of which there's plenty. It's a novel idea, and it carried an excellent group of stories in the previous book. A whole novel about Keller, however, who after all walks a very delicate line between likability and horror, is more than he can readily bear, and, almost unknown in Block's work, there are longueurs here. The plot is wryly serviceableAa rival is attempting to corner the market by getting to some of Keller's intended victims first, and clearly has to be disposed ofAbut about halfway through a certain unease creeps in and won't let go. For all Block's usual great skill with goofy dialogue (here between Keller and Dot, the intermediary who takes the orders for his jobs), it's difficult to indefinitely enjoy jokes about the violent deaths of a number of people who, for all Dot and Keller know, are harmless, perhaps even good citizens, but whom someone is willing to pay to remove. Apparently mindful of this, Block keeps the killings mostly offstage, or with a minimum of graphic violence. But an affection for Keller is an acquired taste, and here it proves difficult to acquire. 9-city author tour. (Nov.) Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.


From Library Journal
With Hit List, the usually reliable Block misfires. The character of Keller is back from Hit Man, and he still seems like a normal guy until he gets a call from his boss to complete an assignment. Being a hit man, his job entails killing total strangers. Things start to go wrong, however; it seems that somebody is beating him to his kills. It also seems that this someone is looking to eliminate Keller. What should have been exciting instead reads like a print version of My Dinner with Andre. There are never any direct action scenes; events are merely discussed after the fact. Keller collects stamps, and many pages are devoted to his hobby, which is fine if you collect stamps. But to be honest, collecting dust would be more appropriate for this book. Purchase only if you need all of Block's novels.-DJeff Ayers, Seattle P.L. Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.


From AudioFile
John Keller, solid citizen, living a Seinfeld type life, plans vacations, browses art museums, plans dinners, and buys groceries like everybody else. He appears so normal. Or is he? Could he be a contract killer? Block, multiple mystery award winner, characterizes an incidental character from a short story and brings him to life in his own novel. The author reads HIT LIST in clipped, private-eye tones. Initially, he sounds cutting-edge, almost riveting. Unfortunately, before the first tape ends, excessive detail and his monotone voice breed confusion, then boredom. This tape would be improved with a talented reader. G.D.W. © AudioFile 2001, Portland, Maine-- Copyright © AudioFile, Portland, Maine


From Booklist
Keller seems the archetypal contemporary urban man. He lives a mostly solitary and quotidian existence on Manhattan's East Side. He eats out; he ruminates in Seinfeldian fashion about how to "clean his plate" in a restaurant that trumpets a bottomless coffee cup: every time he empties his cup, a waitress refills it. He works on his stamp collection and goes to jury duty when summoned. Occasionally, he visits Dot in White Plains, then goes to Louisville or Muscatine, Iowa, to murder a stranger. Keller is a contract killer, and Dot is his "broker." Here Keller realizes that someone is stalking him; he and Dot examine it from every angle and conclude that another hit man is pulling a Microsoft--trying to eliminate the competition. Keller's outrage at this unethical behavior recalls the bizarre logic of Catch-22. It's these elements, the twisted logic and the protagonist's relentless introspection about matters great and small, that make Keller stories so winsome. Block is a wonderfully agile writer; along with Keller, he is the creator of hard-boiled P.I. Matt Scudder, charming bibliophile/thief Bernie Rhodenbarr, and secret agent Evan Tanner. Mystery readers are likely to be most familiar with Rhodenbarr and Scudder, but the previous Keller novel, Hit Man (1997), was a top seller, too. If crime fans don't have Keller on their A-lists yet, they're missing a sure thing. Thomas Gaughan
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved


From Kirkus Reviews
Fresh from his triumphant star turn in the short-story cycle Hit Man (1998), Block's reflective professional assassin John Keller finally fulfills his fans' dearest wish by getting a novel of his own.Although Keller is a solid citizen who collects stamps, shows up for jury duty, and carries out every hit with consummate professionalism-even if his employer is tactless enough to identify the subject by showing Keller a Christmas card photograph of his family-things don't seem to be going right for him. Narrowly escaping death while he's on the job in Louisville, he returns to New York to accept a contract that feels like an interpolated short story. Continuing on his methodically death-dealing rounds in Tampa, in Boston, in the Chicago suburbs, he takes time out only for casual sex with jewelry-maker Maggie Griscomb and a reading from astrologer Louise Carpenter that reduces him to tears. But little things that go wrong with almost every job make it increasingly clear that he's attracted the attention of a rival hit man who doesn't think the country is big enough for both of them. Don't expect the high intensity produced in the Keller stories by their central irony, the contrast between the hero's lethal profession and his organization-man lifestyle and opinions. Instead, listen for the equally ironic but maddeningly meandering conversations between Keller and Dot, his prim scheduler in White Plains.These conversations, which seem such blather, are blather whose interplay of banality and olympian judgment, as in James M. Cain and Quentin Tarantino, forms the real heart of this modern samurai fable.(Author tour) -- Copyright © 2000 Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.


Book Description

Keller is a regular guy. He goes to the movies, works on his stamp collection. Call him for jury duty and he serves without complaint. Then every so often he gets a phone call from White Plains that sends him flying off somewhere to kill a perfect stranger. Keller is a pro and very good at what he does. But the jobs have started to go wrong. The realization is slow coming yet, when it arrives, it is irrefutable: Someone out there is trying to hit the hit man. Keller, God help him, has found his way onto somebody else's hit list.


Download Description
Keller is a regular guy. He goes to the movies, collects stamps, serves jury duty. Then every so often he gets a call, packs his bags, and kills a perfect stranger. But lately the jobs have started to go wrong. And then he realizes...someone out there is trying to hit the hit man. Keller is a killer. Professional, cool, confident, competent, reliable. The consummate pro. The hit man's hit man. But he is a complex person: understandably guarded and reclusive, icy and ruthlessly efficient, he is also prone to loneliness, self-doubt, and career worries. Keller may be a crack assassin, but he is also an all-too-human being. We first met Keller in Hit Man. He's back again in HIT LIST. Same job, new list of targets, and a hit man who's after him... "


About the Author
A Mystery Writers of America Grand Master, Lawrence Block is a four-time winner of the Edgar Allan Poe and Shamus Awards, as well as a recipient of prizes in France, Germany, and Japan. The author of more than fifty books and numerous short stories, he is a devout New Yorker who spends much of his time traveling.

FROM OUR EDITORS

Our Review
Hit the Hit Man
Keller, the solitary contract killer last seen in 1998's Hit Man is back. Hit Man, a collection of linked stories by Grand Master Lawrence Block, took us deeply into the violent, contradictory life of a remorselessly efficient murderer. In Hit List, the first novel-length Keller adventure, Block expands and deepens his compelling portrait of the man he has dubbed, "the Urban Lonely Guy of Assassins."

Put another way, Keller represents the Assassin as Everyman. He is a quiet, unremarkable- looking fellow who loves dogs, collects stamps, fumbles his way through a series of temporary relationships, and speculates about the forces -- karmic, genetic, astrological -- that have made him what he is. But every now and then he accepts a commission from a matronly, middle-aged lady name Dot, travels to a distant city, and murders a perfect stranger.

Hit List is an episodic, deliberately meandering novel that recapitulates the structure of its predecessor, cutting back and forth between Keller's wildly divergent personal and professional lives. Unlike Hit Man, however, this book has a single, central dramatic device that powers the plot: Keller's discovery that he himself is now the target of an unidentified killer.

Keller, together with Dot, comes to this conclusion gradually, after a number of routine assignments take inexplicable turns. An adulterous couple who inherit Keller's motel room are shot to death. A pair of Keller's prospective victims die prematurely. A small-time thief steals Keller's raincoat and is murdered shortly afterward. Eventually, Dot and Keller piece together the bizarre but undeniable truth: that a fellow "professional" -- known only as Roger -- is busily eliminating rival hit men, in the hope of grabbing a larger share of a limited but lucrative market.

Keller's attempts to elude his pursuer, continue practicing his profession, and, in the end, turn the tables on Roger form the dramatic center of this witty, compulsively readable book. But the real heart of the novel -- its non-dramatic center -- is Block's pitch-perfect rendering of his lethal protagonist's day-to-day life. Hit List is filled with colorful, sharply observed set pieces -- long, circular dialogues between Keller and Dot, an emotional encounter with an overweight astrologer, a funny, surprisingly romantic account of Keller's first experience with jury duty -- that are worth the price of admission all by themselves. Block, like Keller, is a consummate professional: resourceful, reliable, always capable of the unexpected move. The Keller stories constitute a unique contribution to modern crime fiction, and are the clear product of a master craftsman at the top of his considerable form.

--Bill Sheehan

Bill Sheehan reviews horror, suspense, and science fiction for Cemetery Dance, The New York Review of Science Fiction, and other publications. His book-length critical study of the fiction of Peter Straub, At the Foot of the Story Tree, has just been published by Subterranean Press (www.subterraneanpress.com).

FROM THE PUBLISHER

Keller is a regular guy, a solid citizen. He goes to the movies, watches the tube, browses the art galleries, and works diligently on his stamp collection. But every now and then a call from the breezily efficient Dot sends him off to kill a total stranger. He takes a plane, rents a car, finds a hotel room, and gets back before the body is cold.

He's a real pro, cool and dispassionate and very good at what he does. Until one day when Dot breaks her own rule and books him for a hit in New York, his home base. She sends him to an art gallery opening, and the girl he gets lucky with steers him to an astrologer. He's a Gemini, his moon's in Taurus...and he's got a murderer's thumb.

Then the jobs start to go wrong. Targets die before he can draw a bead on them. The realization is slow in coming, but there's no getting around it: Somebody out there is trying to hit the hit man. Keller, God help him, has found his way on to somebody else's hit list. Read by the author.

SYNOPSIS

Keller is the consummate pro, the "hit man's hit man." A complex individual, he has survived a serious mid-life crisis, with its accompanying self-doubts and career worries, and now he's back on the job, with a new list of targets. But something is not right, and it has his razor-sharp instincts tingling. He has been in this business too long not to recognize what is rapidly becoming obvious: that he, himself, is in another's rifle sight; that someone has put out a contract on him!

FROM THE CRITICS

Book Magazine

John Keller first cropped up in Playboy, where most of his exploits were chronicled in Lawrence Block's short stories. In this book, Keller travels the country knocking off people he's paid to knock off, and occasionally makes stops along the way to do some shopping or to look for stamps to add to his collection. And he's always checking in with and talking to Dot, the woman who is his job broker. This is the first true Keller novel—last year's Hit Man was in fact a collection of the short stories in which Keller appeared. The longer form should allow Block to stretch and develop Keller more, but what he does instead is give us more of the same. Much more. If I never read about stamps again, or have to read through another scene where there's a pitcher of tea to get through while characters talk it empty, I'll be just fine. What Dot and Keller figure out is that a hired assassin is out there killing his colleagues, eliminating the competition and raising the price. They attempt to trap the killer—whom they call, affectionately, Roger, though they have no idea who he really is. In the meantime, Keller does get involved with a woman, has his fortune told and spends a lot of time serving jury duty. I loved reading the book but was irritated with its many tangents—it often felt like a short story that couldn't figure out how to stop itself. —Randy Michael Signor

Publishers Weekly

John Keller, whom Block introduced in Hit Man, is a killer for hire, with a difference. He's thoughtful, even broody, tends to take a liking to some of the towns where he goes to do his work, dreams of perhaps settling down in one of them one day and collects stamps in his spare time, of which there's plenty. It's a novel idea, and it carried an excellent group of stories in the previous book. A whole novel about Keller, however, who after all walks a very delicate line between likability and horror, is more than he can readily bear, and, almost unknown in Block's work, there are longueurs here. The plot is wryly serviceable--a rival is attempting to corner the market by getting to some of Keller's intended victims first, and clearly has to be disposed of--but about halfway through a certain unease creeps in and won't let go. For all Block's usual great skill with goofy dialogue (here between Keller and Dot, the intermediary who takes the orders for his jobs), it's difficult to indefinitely enjoy jokes about the violent deaths of a number of people who, for all Dot and Keller know, are harmless, perhaps even good citizens, but whom someone is willing to pay to remove. Apparently mindful of this, Block keeps the killings mostly offstage, or with a minimum of graphic violence. But an affection for Keller is an acquired taste, and here it proves difficult to acquire. Copyright 2000 Cahners Business Information.

Library Journal

With Hit List, the usually reliable Block misfires. The character of Keller is back from Hit Man, and he still seems like a normal guy until he gets a call from his boss to complete an assignment. Being a hit man, his job entails killing total strangers. Things start to go wrong, however; it seems that somebody is beating him to his kills. It also seems that this someone is looking to eliminate Keller. What should have been exciting instead reads like a print version of My Dinner with Andre. There are never any direct action scenes; events are merely discussed after the fact. Keller collects stamps, and many pages are devoted to his hobby, which is fine if you collect stamps. But to be honest, collecting dust would be more appropriate for this book. Purchase only if you need all of Block's novels. [Previewed in Prepub Alert, LJ 7/00.]--Jeff Ayers, Seattle P.L. Copyright 2000 Cahners Business Information.\

AudioFile

John Keller, solid citizen, living a Seinfeld type life, plans vacations, browses art museums, plans dinners, and buys groceries like everybody else. He appears so normal. Or is he? Could he be a contract killer? Block, multiple mystery award winner, characterizes an incidental character from a short story and brings him to life in his own novel. The author reads HIT LIST in clipped, private-eye tones. Initially, he sounds cutting-edge, almost riveting. Unfortunately, before the first tape ends, excessive detail and his monotone voice breed confusion, then boredom.￯﾿ﾽThis tape would be improved with a talented reader. G.D.W. © AudioFile 2001, Portland, Maine

Kirkus Reviews

Fresh from his triumphant star turn in the short-story cycle Hit Man (1998), Block's reflective professional assassin John Keller finally fulfills his fans' dearest wish by getting a novel of his own.