Rather than retire as he had been considering, Billy Summers decides to take one last job. It is too hard to resist with a half-million-dollar advance and another million a half on completion. First, he has to be sure the guy he is supposed to kill is the wrong person, which has always been a requirement in his work as a hit man.
The plot and story are well crafted, as we would expect. The mob boss who hires him asks him to spend some time blending into the community before the hit and has him pose as a writer. Billy finds the opportunity exciting, and his writing and approach to it become another story in the story.
Another piece of plot irony is the absence of any supernatural influence in the story. Then about halfway through the book, we have some references to the paranormal activity inside a picture on a wall, but it does not influence the larger storyline. It was almost like an ad for his book, “The Shinning,” because the cabin where the haunted picture hangs is across the valley from where the Overlook hotel had burned, and Billy’s friend tells him “bad stuff happened.”
The crime novel is an assignation thriller with several stories within the story and doesn’t disappoint.