[.ca] Who is Conrad Hirst?: A Novel (ISBN 1416540725)

How Can a Hit Man Retire?:
Imagine that you suffer a great loss of a loved one. Your first reaction is numbness: To feel something, you join a war. That experience brutalizes you so that killing soon means nothing. Not surprisingly, you become a hired killer working for a German gangster. But something happens during your last hit that makes you want to retire. As far as you know, only four people know you are an assassin. Why not eliminate those four and retire to live a better life? That's the purpose of Conrad Hirst at age 32, after a decade of killing. But Hirst finds that things are not as they seem . . . and everything changes. This premise is a very interesting one for such a book. I rated the premise as a five. Unfortunately, the resolution of the premise isn't very credible, palatable, or interesting. I rated the execution of that premise as a two. The average is a three. The author holds back a surprise that's very easy to anticipate but that is intended to be a big revelation. I think the story would have worked better if this revelation had come at the beginning of the book. I felt that the book's gratuitous killing made me feel dirty. That's not an experience I had hoped to gain by reading this book. Unless you are desperately hungry for a Jason Bourne-like book that's not nearly as well done, I suggest you skip this book.