Hit and Run

by Lawrence Block

Book Overview

For years now Keller's had places to go and people to kill.

But enough is enough. Just one more job--paid in advance--and he's going to retire. Waiting in Des Moines for the client's go-ahead, Keller's picking out stamps for his collection at a shop in Urbandale when somebody guns down the charismatic governor of Ohio. Back at his motel, Keller sees the killer's face broadcast on TV. A face he's seen quite often. Every morning. In the mirror.

Keller...

• Format: Mass Market Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0060840919
• ISBN13: 9780060840914
• Release Date: June 2009
• Publisher: Harper
• Length: 304 Pages
• Weight: 0.35 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.8" x 4.2" x 7.0"

Customer Reviews

Hit & Run by Lawrence Block

Hit List (John Keller Mysteries) The latest Keller novel by Lawrence Block is a must read for long term fans of Keller/Block! If you're just being introduced to Keller, Block's quiet and moral hit man, I recommend starting with the first Keller novel and get to know him through Block's timeline While the book certainly stands out on its own; it is fun to read Keller's first exploits right up until Hit and Run.

A Hit by Lawrence Block

Keller is a very effective hit man, a job rife with danger and one that doesn't even have dental benefits. The whole series is a favorite of mine and this installment is a fun read. Keller gets double crossed by a paying client. Are there no scruples among murderers? After living on the run he ends up in New Orleans where his life takes a turn. This is a series that is better read in order, starting with Hit Man and Hit List. I hope we see more of Keller, who I doubt has really retired entirely from his professional cleaning business.

A dark story with an incredibly timely theme

There is an 800-pound elephant in the room this political season, and it makes people so queasy they don't want to talk or even think about it. But it's impossible to ignore since this year marks the 40th anniversary of the assassinations of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and Senator Robert F. Kennedy. Great fiction reflects the time in which it is written. And great fiction is fearless. Richard Condon wrote a novel called THE MANCHURIAN CANDIDATE, which became a classic film in 1962. The movie was pulled from public viewing for 25 years after the murder of President John F. Kennedy. But no sane person would say that Condon and director John Frankenheimer's fiction had anything to do with the tragic events in Dallas. Now in 2008, veteran mystery writer Lawrence Block has written a novel in which his hit man, Keller, is in Des Moines, Iowa, on assignment when the African American governor of Ohio, John Tatum Longford, is assassinated while exploring a run for the White House. And Keller has been fit for the frame. Of course, this book was written months before Senator Barack Obama began his meteoric rise to the Democratic presidential nomination. HIT AND RUN is not a political thriller. After it happens, the assassination and its political or social significance is barely mentioned. That is not what the book is about. This is a noir story about the innocent man trapped. Yet the paranoia that has been present in the American psyche since those dark days of Dallas and Memphis and the pantry of the Ambassador Hotel lingers faintly in the background here, like a discordant jazz soundtrack from a classic film noir. For five decades, Block has been writing mysteries and is one of the greatest writers in the history of American letters to work in this genre. Whether in the dark novels of alcoholic PI Matthew Scudder or the lighter books involving burglar Bernie Rhodenbarr, Block has consistently proven he deserves his place in the pantheon of great American mystery writers alongside Ed McBain, Elmore Leonard, Donald Westlake and Robert B. Parker. So those of us who are fans of Block expect good, extremely well-written books. But by page 28 it becomes apparent that HIT AND RUN is not merely a good book but a great book in the noir tradition. And then it does something truly amazing: it transcends that dark tradition to become a novel of redemption and hope. Hit man John Paul Keller was first introduced to us in a Playboy short story many years ago. Like a corporate downsizing consultant, he has an unpleasant job to do. He does it very well but does not particularly enjoy killing people. Keller does evil work but is actually a nice, apparently normal guy who readers can't help but root for. Keller is now looking forward to retirement with his beloved stamp collecting hobby when he reluctantly agrees to "the last job." You know trouble will ensue when something is the last job. And it does. He immediately senses danger when he is escorted around Des Moi

RICK "SHAQ" GOLDSTEIN SAYS: "OUR FAVORITE "HIT-MAN" IS BACK AND ON THE LAM!"

Lawrence Block is one of the most well known and highly "decorated" mystery authors of all-time. He has written over fifty books and been named a "GRAND MASTER" of the Mystery Writers of America and is a four-time winner of the prestigious "EDGAR" and "SHAMUS" awards along with numerous international awards. There are several individual series within the author's fifty-plus books, and the most recent series is "KELLER'S GREATEST HITS" of which the fourth and latest episode is "HIT AND RUN". John Paul Keller, or "Keller" as he is known, mostly to his best friend and business associate "Dot" and a few other people in the world outside of his business life... and his business is killing people for money. After all he is a hit-man. Keller has saved his money over the years, and with Dot's surprising savvy business investments he has accrued quite a nest egg. He has thought of getting out of the "business" for quite awhile, but his one special "indulgence" of a hobby is quite expensive: He collects stamps. Because of his penchant for valuable stamps, every time he says this is going to be his last job; he finds another costly must-have stamp to buy, and it throws off his retirement plans. But this time, the job that Dot sets up for him to "whack" another unknown victim in Iowa, is going to absolutely, un- categorically, unconditionally, be the last one! When Keller arrives in Iowa from his home in New York, something... and everything... feels wrong. He gets the idea he is being set up... but doesn't know for what. Mr. Block's humorous "snappy" dialogue has never been crisper. Keller always uses aliases or no names at all, and it isn't surprising when he uses so many aliases during a caper that it might be handy to have a scorecard. When he meets his contact in Iowa the man says to Keller: "THEY NEVER TOLD ME YOUR NAME,... Keller says: "THEY NEVER TOLD ME YOURS, EITHER." "MEANING LET'S KEEP IT THAT WAY? FAIR ENOUGH." He is registered in the hotel under the name Leroy Montrose, and he rents a car at Hertz under the name of Holden Blankenship. Perhaps the author's greatest strength, is in the machine-gun like pace of the parenthetical humor and insight that he imbibes the main character with throughout this first rate saga. Keller stops by a stamp shop and he impresses the owner with the fact that he pulls his own "tongs" out of his pocket. Keller laments to himself that with the current airport security that he's afraid to carry his stamp "tongs" on a plane. "If you were going to get on an airplane, some clown at Security would confiscate them. Imagine a terrorist with a pair of stamp "tongs". Why, he could grab the flight attendant and threaten to pluck her eyebrows." While he is at the stamp shop there is an announcement that John Tatum Longford the first black Governor of Ohio was assassinated while visiting Iowa. When Keller gets back to his room he turns on CNN and as they report the assassination, all of a sudden he sees his picture on the scr

One of Block's Best

Keller is a professional hit man. He specializes in paid-to-order death that looks like an accident and has always gotten away without being caught. However, Keller is also a man with a conscience. Not about the people he kills, because that would get in the way of him doing his job. But he dwells on how he spends his life, the people he spends it with, and what life is ultimately all about. That aspect of Keller is the one that I most enjoy spending time with in the books. HIT AND RUN is veteran mystery/suspense writer Lawrence Block's fourth book about Keller. It's also the first of the four books that's actually a novel. The previous three books were collections of short stories gathered in a loose novelistic style. Block first published the stories in PLAYBOY magazine and other magazines. Block always threw in a few new stories each volume as well. I love the characters of Keller and Dot, the woman who brokers the services Keller offers to discriminating and wealthy clients. I look forward to the times they sit and discuss the world and their lives after Keller's adventures. Despite the lethal business they are in, Keller and Dot appear like people you could meet on the street and engage in an idle chat that would give you something to think about. Each time I closed a Keller "book" in the past, I could think about different thoughts or revelations that Keller experienced in those stories. Block took his time writing the stories. I can tell how much he enjoyed exploring the characters and themes he developed over the course of bringing Keller and his assignments to the page. Throughout the books, the character and his situation changed. The relationship with Dot altered too, and the two of them became even closers friends than business partners. HIT AND RUN changes a lot of things, though. For the first time, Keller's face is in the news for a murder. The kicker is that Keller didn't kill the governor of Iowa. He was framed, and he doesn't even know who did the framing. The book divides neatly into three acts, though I didn't notice that at the time I read the book. I started on the novel intending to read just a few pages, just enough to close the book on Keller's first kill. Instead, Keller never even gets to whack the guy he hired on to kill. By the end of the first chapter, he's running for his life. Not only are the cops pursuing him, but so are the faceless people he just became the fall guy for. I read the book from cover to cover. Could not put it down. As I said, the book divides neatly into three acts. The first act is pure adrenaline as Keller doubles back and tries to figure out what to do. Dot is off-line for the first time since forever, and there's not a single other person in the world that Keller can talk to about his career. Keller makes it back to New York and his apartment in time to see the story about Dot's "accidental" death on the television news. In his apartment, he discovers that so