Wrong Gun for Hire

How does a broken young assassin-for-hire escape the killing business? It’s no easy matter, as the protagonist discovers in British author Kevin Wignall’s latest U.S. release, Who Is Conrad Hirst? In his review of that new novel, posted this morning in January Magazine, David Thayer explains:

Conrad makes a list of the people who stand in the way of his plans. Four men, all of them complicit in the killing for hire, contractors and subcontractors in the architecture of death. Only four men who know his identity--he must do away with them all. He reasons that his one-man blitz on [his employer, German crime boss Julius] Eberhardt’s organization will set him on a new course and restore meaning to his life. This is the quest that’s so central to this novel: Conrad’s relentless effort to experience his own humanity.

But of course such a simply plan is bound to go awry, in part because the certainties of Hirst’s life and job are not so certain, after all. Who is he really working for, and what do they demand of him now? Although Thayer says that Wignall’s fourth novel (after For the Dogs, 2004) boasts a “somewhat vexing structure,” he can’t complain about the “major plot twist that comes at the end of its main story.” And he’s quite impressed with what the author makes of his protagonist’s principal conceit:

For all of the story’s violence, this novel has a meditative quality and makes a serious effort to explore the injured psyche of a dangerous man. Beneath the minimalist style and curt descriptions there is a romantic belief that the search for meaning will restore Conrad to a community of people on whom he had turned his back.

You can read all of Thayer’s review here.