Billy Summers

by Stephen King, Regiane Winarski (Translator)

Billy Summers é uma história de guerra, amor, sorte e destino, com um herói complexo buscando sua última chance de redenção. Impossível de largar e impossível de esquecer.

Billy Summers é o homem com a arma; um assassino de aluguel e um dos melhores atiradores do mundo. Mas ele tem um critério: só aceita o serviço se o alvo for realmente uma pessoa ruim.
Agora, Billy quer se aposentar, mas antes precisa realizar um último trabalho. Veterano da guerra no Iraque e um mágico quando se trata de desaparecer depois do crime, o hábil assassino tinha tudo planejado. Então, o que poderia dar errado?
Basicamente tudo.
Quando Billy se acomoda em uma cidadezinha do interior, disfarçado como um escritor tentando superar um bloqueio criativo enquanto espera seu alvo ser transferido para julgamento, ele não imagina a trama de traições, perseguições e vingança que o aguarda.

"Ver o mestre do terror se aventurando em um thriller noir apenas prova que King ainda consegue nos chocar e surpreender, depois de todas essas décadas." – Esquire

"Stephen King deixa um pouco o terror, que é sua marca registrada, e mergulha em um thriller tenso e obscuro. Assassinatos vis e confusões divertidíssimas. Outro livro imperdível do mestre." – Kirkus Reviews

Genres: Fiction, Thriller, Horror, Mystery, Crime, Audiobook, Mystery Thriller

472 pages, Paperback

First published August 3, 2021

About the author

Stephen Edwin King was born the second son of Donald and Nellie Ruth Pillsbury King. After his father left them when Stephen was two, he and his older brother, David, were raised by his mother. Parts of his childhood were spent in Fort Wayne, Indiana, where his father's family was at the time, and in Stratford, Connecticut. When Stephen was eleven, his mother brought her children back to Durham, Maine, for good. Her parents, Guy and Nellie Pillsbury, had become incapacitated with old age, and Ruth King was persuaded by her sisters to take over the physical care of them. Other family members provided a small house in Durham and financial support. After Stephen's grandparents passed away, Mrs. King found work in the kitchens of Pineland, a nearby residential facility for the mentally challenged.

Stephen attended the grammar school in Durham and Lisbon Falls High School, graduating in 1966. From his sophomore year at the University of Maine at Orono, he wrote a weekly column for the school newspaper, THE MAINE CAMPUS. He was also active in student politics, serving as a member of the Student Senate. He came to support the anti-war movement on the Orono campus, arriving at his stance from a conservative view that the war in Vietnam was unconstitutional. He graduated in 1970, with a B.A. in English and qualified to teach on the high school level. A draft board examination immediately post-graduation found him 4-F on grounds of high blood pressure, limited vision, flat feet, and punctured eardrums.

He met Tabitha Spruce in the stacks of the Fogler Library at the University, where they both worked as students; they married in January of 1971. As Stephen was unable to find placement as a teacher immediately, the Kings lived on his earnings as a laborer at an industrial laundry, and her student loan and savings, with an occasional boost from a short story sale to men's magazines.

Stephen made his first professional short story sale ("The Glass Floor") to Startling Mystery Stories in 1967. Throughout the early years of his marriage, he continued to sell stories to men's magazines. Many were gathered into the Night Shift collection or appeared in other anthologies.

In the fall of 1971, Stephen began teaching English at Hampden Academy, the public high school in Hampden, Maine. Writing in the evenings and on the weekends, he continued to produce short stories and to work on novels.

Reviews

[Emily May · Rating 4 out of 5]

A stranger came, and he turned into a neighbour, but here's the punchline, he turned out to be a stranger all along.

I can't say I liked everything about Billy Summers, but I did find myself reaching for it whenever I had a spare minute, eager to know what was next for this rugged antihero with his closet full of trauma.

Sometimes King dives in with a creative (and often wacky) plot with lots of original touches (think It, Pet Sematary, Sleeping Beauties) but he's also a pro at taking on tired subjects and breathing new life into them. Here he takes a trope that is almost a subgenre in itself - that of the "one last job" spy/detective/assassin - acknowledges it in the text and invites us on his own exploration of it.

The writing and dialogue are strong, as I would expect from King at this point. Billy Summers is a hired killer set to retire and disappear into obscurity after he completes this one last job, but it's a job like no other. It requires him to play a role for a duration of weeks, or even months, and befriend his neighbours, before his target is in sight. His cover is that he is an author writing a book.

I found Billy likeable, the kind of character who will do the morally questionable stuff to survive, and punish those who deserve it, but still stays quite firmly on the hero side of antihero, in my opinion. Alongside befriending his neighbours and beginning to feel shittier and shittier for deceiving them, Billy really does begin to write a book. His own story.

What emerges is a tragic history, of course. I "enjoyed" reading about Billy as a child and adolescent, if enjoyed can be the word. The scenes in Fallujah were less gripping for me, simply because I've never had much interest in war stories.

It's a compelling plot with strong characters, especially the eponymous protagonist, and an overall quite touching message about what it is to be a writer, the freedom it offers, as well as the ability to shape worlds to your liking. The (sort of) romance felt weird for numerous reasons, even with Billy openly acknowledging them.

HUGE warning for graphic depictions of violence, sexual assault, and post-assault trauma.

[Regina · Rating 5 out of 5]

Crime fiction. That’s what Billy Summers is. Let’s get that out of the way from the outset so Uncle Stevie’s Constant Readers can prepare themselves accordingly and the “I’ve never read Stephen King!” people can open their minds to finally giving him a try.

And I do hope they will, because Billy Summers is a damn fine book by any measure. Many are saying its his best in years, and I have to agree with them. It’s a non-horror jewel in King’s crown that could possibly be mistaken for a novel by an author like S.A. Cosby or maybe even Dennis Lehane. No horror, no ghosts. (Well, unless you count the ghosts of King’s canon that float through the story in the form of delightfully placed Easter eggs. I see you, clown in the backseat! I adore you, Overlook Hotel hedge maze!)

While Billy Summers the book comes close to perfection, Billy Summers the character is imperfectly perfect. He’s an Iraq war sniper who puts his post-battle skills to use as a hitman for hire. But he’s a hitter with a heart of gold, because he only takes jobs to take out “bad people.” (Yes, it’s a little “Barry” meets “Dexter.”) The first part of the novel meanders through the set up of his character and his “final job,” and then at the midway point it takes off in a direction I never saw coming. And that direction is in the form of a relationship between two characters I’ll remember for a long time.

Billy Summers also features the book-within-a-book device, because Billy is writing a memoir about his childhood and war experiences. Readers get even more context to his motivations through those sections.

Now, there is violence. There are very graphically described sexual assaults. There is a lot of anti-Trump sentiment. BUT, there is a beautiful ending. King has finally landed the plane on the runway of repletion.

This one did indeed leave me satisfied from start to finish. Thanks, Uncle Stevie.

Blog: https://www.confettibookshelf.com/

[Nilufer Ozmekik · Rating 5 out of 5]

Stephen King's Billy Summers is a masterful blend of suspense, character study, and moral contemplation. The story follows a hitman, Billy Summers, who is about to retire but takes one final job that goes deeper than expected. King's portrayal of Billy is nuanced, presenting him as a man grappling with his own sense of justice and morality. The novel skillfully balances the tense world of crime with heartfelt moments of introspection, as Billy not only confronts his past but also his place in a world that seems to offer no redemption. King fans will appreciate the intricate plotting, slow-burn suspense, and rich character development that make this novel an unforgettable experience. A powerful meditation on good and evil, Billy Summers showcases King's remarkable ability to tell stories that haunt you long after you finish the last page.

—————-

Each time I start a new KING novel, I feel like a child open up new Christmas gift box! Yes,I'm feeling like celebrating Christmas in August! Yaaaaayyy to me!

[megs_bookrack · Rating 5 out of 5]

I promise I will write a review for this one day. I promise! I am so far behind on reviews right now. It's insanity.



Full review to come...stay tuned!!!

Earlier:



My preorder has arrived! I can't believe I am starting my most anticipated book of the year!!!

Original:

Brace yourselves, Constant Readers. This is it.



An all-new 500+ page novel from the King is being released on August 3, 2021!!!

This sounds like a taut thriller, with no doubt a healthy dose of dark themes, and I'm so here for it!!!



Preorder placed.

[Geonn Cannon · Rating 1 out of 5]

This is quite easily the worst Stephen King book I've ever read. It drags on... and on... and on... and then when he can't think of a way to drag the story out any farther, he shifts gears to a completely different plot that drags... on... and on... and on... until eventually the end of the book is like a completely different novel than the one you started reading. And Billy is such a bland nothing of a character that I never even bothered to get a mental picture of what he looked like. He was a lump of clay bouncing from one situation to the next. And hey, you guys like The Shining? Because he literally has a character stand on a hill, point, and basically say "Look, that's where The Shining took place, that's cool right? Y'all remember The Shining? That was great." It was Ready Player One level of reference porn, made even worse because it was King referencing himself.

Disappointing to say this as a King fan, but this one is absolute trash. I'm not even listing the dates I read it so it won't show up on my 2021 reading list. I'd rather just forget I ever read it.

[Ginger · Rating 4 out of 5]

I was not expecting to enjoy this new book by Stephen King as much as I did!

I’ve unfortunately become more critical as I get older of my favorite authors. I know they’ve put out great books in the past and I try to keep my fangirl in check.
It’s almost more pressure on them because of this mindset!

But with Billy Summers, I can say that this book is well done!

If you are looking for horror, you’ll not find it here.

The only horror you will find in the book is bad men and the actions they take. The fact that this is not horror might sway some King fans away, but I’m happy with him putting out books for different genres!

Billy Summers is about a hired killer. He has decided to do one last job, but he doesn’t realize how complicated the hit is going to get.

One of the great things in the plot is Billy’s disguise while waiting to do the hit.
He's disguised as a writer and living in the suburbs. He comes to live in Red Bluff and decides to write a book while he waits.

I really enjoy the book in a book theme. And it really works in this.

Billy writes about his life and the layers just start peeling off, one at a time.
He is a grey character and I love these characters the best. In his book, you see he’s not a good man, but he’s not an evil one either.

His upbringing and combat experience have slowly made him who he is when we meet him for the first time. I loved Billy and I loved how King puts a spotlight on veterans and the struggles they endure when they get back to their country. Well done sir, well done.

I can see two things that people might struggle with in this book:

✔️ It’s a bit slow in the beginning. The book slogs a bit until the hit happens. I do not have issues with a slow build, but I can see how this would offset some readers.

✔️ And the last thing is King takes some jabs at Trump and MAGA voters since this is set in a deep red state.
He doesn’t necessarily get political; he just shows how much he doesn’t like the guy and struggles with hatred that’s directed at immigrants in this country.
And if you don’t know this about King, I’m sure his Twitter account will tell the tale. 🧐🤣

I do hope King gets away from the slight political digs not because I don’t agree with him (I very much do!), but I don’t necessarily want that in a fiction book about a hired killer.

Other then that, I loved the characters.
I loved the ending and thought it was fitting. Powerful stuff!

[J.D. Barker · Rating 5 out of 5]

Wow. This might be Stephen King’s best yet. The ending is perfection. Releases August 3 - get your preorders in!
—J.D. Barker, NY Times bestselling author of A Caller's Game

[David Putnam · Rating 5 out of 5]

Loved this book King is a true master craftsman. Billy Summers is written in third person, first person, with multiple points of view and jumps tenses, past and present. He does it seamlessly and if you’re not watching it’s easy to miss.
Billy Summers is an antihero and follows in the footsteps of some of the great antihero’s created by Richard Stark and Jim Thompson. He is a killer for hire with a conscience. He’ll only kill if the person deserves it. When his contractor double crosses Billy, he goes after them to make it right. Not unlike Payback a great book that has been made into a movie twice, once with Lee Marvin and once with Mel Gibson. Of course, in King’s capable hands this iteration has far more depth of character. Though Billy is breaking the law he lives by a code and sticks to it. One of my favorite kind of stories. King also tells two stories the current and the past. He does this by having the character write a book. Billy shares some the pages to this book with the reader. It’s truly a brilliant vehicle, the backstory is told without stopping the forward motion of the current day story.
Billy Summers is a crime novel, a romance and a revenge story all in one interwoven with verve and enough emotions to pull the story along. At the same time evoking a tear now and again.
This one is going up in the top four King novels: Bag of Bones (what a wonderful read), Tommy Knockers, The Stand, 11/22/63 and Full Dark No Stars.
I highly recommend this book.

David Putnam author of the Bruno Johnson series.

[Justin Tate · Rating 3 out of 5]

Lots to love, lots to meh. In the end it's a solid feel-good novel in the vein of Shawshank Redemption, Stand By Me and Elevation. Just not as good as any of those.

The major issue is that it takes far too long to reach a premise. Half the book must drudge by before we understand what we're reading—the story of an unlikely pairing, the hitman who only kills bad guys and a young girl who was left for dead.

Their partnering is the highlight of the novel, allowing both characters to emerge as charismatic figures. It's too little too late by that point, however. Many readers will give up before the girl even appears and those of us who trust King enough to march on aren't given a dynamic enough character study to justify the slow chunks.

We cheer on their pursuit to punish the world's "real" bad guys, but their methods are cheesy and without an ounce of suspense. Everything falls into place exactly as we expect. No twist, no surprise.

However, Billy Summers is a surprising spin on the "last job gone wrong" genre and hitman fiction in general. Certainly it is unexpected for a noir protagonist to spend most of his time penning a memoir instead of dodging kingpins and outrunning the law. Pairing him up with a girl whose situation mirrors his own experiences is a clever way to add humanity to the situation. There just isn't enough evidence that this quiet take on the genre is effective.

Ultimately it's not King's best effort, but still a decent adventure with engaging characters and lovely concluding message. Given the choice of King screwing up the beginning or the ending, I would much prefer him to falter at the start. Since it does end so well, I can forgive much of the opening bloat.

PS: Fans will enjoy a number of references to the Overlook Hotel as the characters pass through Colorado country. There are enough mentions of the hotel, and Alice's desire to live in Colorado, that I wonder if King is setting groundwork for another sequel to The Shining.

[Beata · Rating 4 out of 5]

Some may say that Mr King chose a theme that has been covered in several books earlier, and they are right, however, I just enjoyed meeting Billy and that is what matters to me.
Billy's background is what shaped him and yet despite calling himself a bad man, he recognizes evil when he sees it, which means that he is not totally lost in my eyes. Moreover, what he does for Alice, a young woman mistreated brutally, while thinking about the little sister he lost tragically in childhood, shows that empathy is still in him.
Billy's story gripped me, yes, and my stars are for the reading pleasure I was offered by Mr King. The book is not poetic or intelectually challenging but it ticked several boxes, which was grand.

[Bradley · Rating 5 out of 5]

Frankly, I’m always happy to read a Stephen King.

It’s as easy as that.

He never disappoints.

Case in point: Billy Summers could easily have turned out to be a Dexter-like romp or a thriller in the vein of all hit men. It could have turned out a Stockholm-type romance spiced up with a little revenge and moral outrage to get all those types of juices flowing, too.

And make no mistake, Billy Summers DOES have those elements.

But King is a king of subversion when it comes to plots. He welcomes us down those long dark paths, leading us to believe that that monster WILL be down one, but the real monster isn’t there. It’s actually in your back pocket all along.

And I loved it from start to finish. Intelligence, the burden and release of art in a most unexpectedly delightful way, and real connection. I was invested from start to finish not only for the initial hook but MORE for all the wonderful extras.

King rocks.

[Marchpane · Rating 2 out of 5]

This one was such a mixed experience for me. I loved the first half—professional hitman on ‘one last job’ embedded in a small town, his ‘cover’ is that he’s a writer so we also get a book-within-a-book about the hitman’s early life. I could see why the reviews were saying this is King’s best in a long time.

But something that happens midway really soured me on this novel. How Billy treats Alice when he finds her and what he does later to attain vengeance on Alice’s behalf disgusted me and made me hate Billy to the point that I could not regain my earlier enjoyment. Yes, I recognise the irony—Billy was a murderer and a ‘bad person’ from the beginning—but these specific acts crossed a fictional line for me, they are presented as heroic and never challenged within the text. Writers need to do better than this when writing about sexual violence (no exceptions for genre fiction, or just because your name is Stephen King).

On this book’s politics: the ultimate villain is clearly modelled on a very politically influential person, and there are about a dozen mentions of Trump throughout the book, usually in the context of whether certain characters are Trump supporters or not. King likes to use historical signposts (in this book he also namedrops Netflix, MacBook, Zillow etc, to the point that it looks like product placement) and that includes political references, but I have another theory about this novel.

King has said in interviews that originally Billy Summers was to be set in 2020. When the pandemic happened, he could not make it work so he moved the setting back to 2019. Was the timeframe so important? Billy Summers is embedded in suburbia in a red state for the better part of a year, with the action finally culminating on Halloween (followed by a 21 November coda). I think this was intended to be—very specifically—an election year novel. Would it have made that much of a difference? Who knows… but it’s intriguing to think about.

[Peter · Rating 5 out of 5]

For many readers the most awaiting book of the year. It made me very curious when picking it up. In the first part you'll find King meeting up with Jack Reacher. Billy Summers, a hitman and former sniper, takes over his last job. He assumes the fake identity as a writer (!) and soon troubles begin. He doesn't trust his client, then there is a young girl named Alice, an old buddy of his, Bucky, and a story full of revenge and getting owed money. Oh, where's the horror? As a true King fan you can easily guess what memories of the past lie hidden in Colorado (I don't give any spoilers). But that part was told in a brilliant way. At the end of the story you'll even find two endings... This was a great King novel. We have a modern war (Irak, seen from Billy's perspective), a strong female character (Alice) and some fine crime story with a shot of horror rolling along. The characters were great, the setting unusual, very entertaining, this will be a great movie in near future, I'm sure about it. Couldn't put the book down. Probably his most unusual book so far. Liked it and can highly recommend reading it.

[Labijose · Rating 4 out of 5]

Una buena novela para comenzar 2022.

¿Qué decir de la penúltima novela del maestro King que no hayáis dicho ya los demás? ¿Que su fuerte es la construcción de personajes? Check. ¿Que sabe desenvolverse “casi” por igual en su género favorito, es decir, el terror, como en el resto de géneros con el que suele intercalar sus novelas? Check. ¿Que le gusta hablar de escritores, rindiendo un homenaje a su labor, poniéndolos como protagonistas en muchas de sus obras? Check. ¿Que por muchas páginas que contengan, sus novelas se leen de un tirón? Check. ¿Que no le gustan muchos de los aspectos de la sociedad americana en la que vive, y no se cansa de lanzar pullitas al sistema, presidentes incluidos? Check. ¿Que se mantiene al día en cuanto a tecnología se refiere (ya cuenta con 74 primaveras) y que incluso se permite mencionar esta jodida pandemia, metiéndola de soslayo en la trama? Check.

Pues aquí tenemos la historia de Billy Summers, veterano asesino a sueldo con ganas de finiquitar su carrera. Ha vivido el horror de Faluya (Irak) y ha perdido a gente por el camino. Ahora acepta un último encargo, pero, a pesar de realizarlo con éxito, surgirán complicaciones. Sabe demasiado. No puede irse de rositas a disfrutar de su dinero. Hay malos que tratarán de impedírselo. Pero él es Billy Summers, avisados estáis.

Novela de redención donde las haya, y para ello nuestro protagonista compartirá el papel con Alice Maxwell, una joven que sufre el drama de los abusos sexuales. Juntos emprenderán un viaje de amistad y venganza, para mí, lo mejor de la obra. Alice convencerá a Billy para que finalice el retrato de su vida, retrato que Billy comenzó como mera distracción, pero que acabará siendo su confesionario emocional. Al final, ella terminará por ser el motivo de la debacle de Billy, pero, ¡qué diantres!, el viaje habrá merecido la pena.

Y sí, hay una mención al hotel Overlook de “El resplandor”. Y un cuadro que parece que cobra vida propia. Detalles que el maestro no puede dejar de mencionar. No en vano es el causante de tantas pesadillas nocturnas. Y aún así, volvemos a leerlo una y otra vez. Nos tiene enganchados. Y que nos dure el hechizo.

[Farrah · Rating 4 out of 5]

A quick review because I don't have a lot of time, plus I'm not too crazy for books about hitmen or crime syndicates. I only read this because it's King. I haven't missed any of his books before and I don't plan to start now 🤩
As always, I enjoyed marveling at his wonderful storytelling and the way he intertwines past books. There's a great reference to The Shining here!

[Kevin Kuhn · Rating 4 out of 5]

Warning – sexual assault and PTSD triggers in this book.

Like a tightrope walker, Stephen King toes some fine lines in this novel. It’s all about balance, and while he wobbles and sways a few times, imho he ultimately succeeds. Billy Summers is a killer for hire, an Iraq war vet that is willing to use his considerable talents, if the pay is right and the target is a ‘bad guy.’ This is the first wobble, is killing ever justified? Billy struggles with it and King wants you to, as well. Through his writing, you’ll find it hard not to like the guy, but there is always this little nagging issue – he’s a murderer for hire, after all.

Another stagger on the rope, the plot itself is a trope, or even several tropes - “Hired Killer gets Shot at Redemption” or “One Last Job.” King addresses this by taking it head on. Main character - Billy Summers himself recognizes that his own story, his own life is a trope. King wants you to know he understands and he’s marching forward anyway. But he does more than just point it out. He makes sure that his MC is not perfect – he makes mistakes, he forgets little details, and while he’s highly skilled, he’s not infallible. He also introduced a brilliant component to the well-worn plot line. In Billy’s next sniper job, he must become embedded, and the cover story for him, is that he’s a writer, working on a novel. Billy, with much time on his hands, decides to write his own autobiography and it’s this balancing pole that keeps the book from being just a trope. We get to read some of that backstory and dive deep into Billy’s motivations and trepidations. We get to experience his joy of realizing he can write, and King nails this component.

The next tremor on the line, is Billy’s primary relationship during the majority of the tale. I’ll do my best not to make this a spoiler, but if you want nothing about the plot, you may not want to expand this section. At some point, Billy rescues a sexual assault victim. Their relationship itself is the biggest tightrope act of all and the point at which King’s story almost falls (again imho). She has just experienced brutal, horrific sexual assault, yet she quickly trusts this hired assassin. In fact, she not only trusts him, but she also rapidly falls in love with him, as he tenderly helps her through her PTSD panic attacks. King navigates these treacherous steps by Billy being a perfect gentleman and resisting the growing sexual tension by refusing to give into his urges. Honestly, it made me uncomfortable and borders on cringy, but Billy genuinely cares about her, and recognizes the issues (Stockholm Syndrome, age gap, etc.) with their relationship. However, it doesn’t stop him from using her to help him deal with the fallout of his last job. It might be another step too far, but at least Billy understands he’s probably crossing a line and continually gives her the opportunity to walk away. Still, big wobble on the tightrope, but their relationship (and watching King navigate the fine line) certainly keeps you engaged in the story.

What keeps the story firmly on the line, are the things you might expect from King. The tale hooks you quickly with authentic-feeling characters and lots of possibilities in the plot. King inserts little observations of life & people that fire the synapses in my brain. I also have been enjoying King’s occasional departure from the supernatural. This is a straight up action-adventure tale and the only supernatural encounter is a fun callout to a prior novel that’s really unnecessary to the plot. Being a King fan, I always enjoy these little connections between his works. Finally, the ending, well the final ending, is fun, and this is an area where King occasionally stumbles. I’ll just say that King gets a bit introspective and pays homage to the joy that writing has brought to his life though this finale.

Four bullet-ridden stars for this carefully written story of a troubled war-hero who’s trying mightily to write the proper ending of his life.

[Kimber Silver · Rating 4 out of 5]

"There's a man who walks beside me
It is who I used to be
And I wonder if she sees him
And confuses him with me"
~Jason Isbell, "Live Oak"

Billy Summers is an ex-Marine sniper-turned-hitman. He is one of the best at making the shot and getting away clean. Houdini, they call him; he has been at it for years, and it’s time to get out while the gettin' is good. It seems a simple plot, one most of us have read before, but this story is so much more. It is about life, choices and friendships, and how sometimes the Fates hand out bouquets and sometimes they hand out horror. Our reaction to each determines where we end up.

A word of caution — the beginning is as slow as molasses in January. But while I was wondering if I should continue, King was expertly planting seeds. It all came together about a quarter of the way in, and I knew he had me.

I have been a fan since Carrie scared the bejesus out of me as a kid. I read him religiously for years, and then we drifted apart. Billy Summers has renewed my love for this author. The tension was perfect, I laughed quite often and even shed a tear or two. I adored Billy and his motley crew, and am ever so glad to have met them.

If you are, or have been, a fan of Stephen King, there is an excellent chance you’ll love this one. In my opinion, it is one of his best recent works.

A big thank you to Beata for her tempting review that convinced me to give this one a try!
Here is the link to her review: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...

[Johann (jobis89) · Rating 5 out of 5]

4.5 stars.. but could be 5. Gonna sit on it. But wow, this one really got its hooks into me! Very emotionally invested!

[Elyse Walters · Rating 5 out of 5]

Audiobook…. Read by Paul Sparks
…..16 hours and 57 minutes

My overall thoughts….tidbits….but no spoilers….
are as follows:
Great ride….entertaining…often heart endearing….
…more crime thriller/than horror….
…a story within a story….
…mostly ‘gruesome-graphic-lite’….but does include ‘outrage-fallout’ from a ghastly gang-rape. The three-little-evil-pigs: Tripp, Jack, and Hank….have some punishment coming.
…Other characters have payment punishment coming as well.

…I Loved the first few hours…totally hooked.
…Then my interest started to dip for a couple of hours.
…THE LAST HALF OF THE BOOK WAS THE BEST!

Billy Summers may be on the spectrum—‘might’—(readers can decide)….
but, either way, I liked the ‘complex-multifaceted’ guy.
Billy was not an old fart — but a horrific childhood event could have turned him into one.
Billy has killed others (only bad men)—seventeen times—when we first meet him,
but….
we care for Billy Summers—similar in ways we did Dexter.
We also care for…
*Alice Maxwell*

SOME OF THE BEST SCENES OF THIS NOVEL…..are when ALICE and BILLY are together.
The development of the Billy/Alice relationship is genuine—straight from the heart. Wonderful journey they take together — and TERRIFIC STORYTELLING!

Alice was a shy, confused, girl, but she was not a dumb girl.
Alice was in shock, humiliated, felt shame, was nauseated, and vomiting when Billy first meets her. Billy saved Alice's life.

Alice knew that Billy was a wanted killer, but Billy was hoping that she would trust him. She does. Alice grows to love Billy.
Billy loves her back. He did not wanna fuck her, he sincerely cared for her.
We witness Alice blossoming- healing- showing up more beautiful.
We also witness changes in Billy - showing up more beautiful

Fun&Funny parts: wigs, fake pregnancy belly, dancing & laughing…..etc.
Unlikable and likable characters.

Puzzling part:
…..a painting on the wall in a summer cabin (voodoo tricks?/!)

Assassinations, hitman adventures, lack of honesty and honor, outlaw mentality/bounty hunters’, shopping sprees, car rides, killings…mystery-suspense…cheating, writing, books, Netflix watching, tensions, love….
and….
ONE LAST JOB…
…..”It is what it is, so fuck it”!

[Rebecca · Rating 5 out of 5]

“When you give pain it leaves a scar. It scars your mind. It scars your spirit. And it should, because hurting someone, killing someone, is no little thing. Take it from someone who knows.”

Billy Summers is a hitman and a decorated former Marine sniper. He's ready to retire, but before he does, he accepts one last job that offers a huge payday that would set him up comfortably for life.
However, as the details come together, Billy notices something feels very wrong. He does not yet know, just how wrong or about the woman he will soon meet who will help him try and set things right.

A page turning thriller that is part war history/introspective, part kick-ass hitman with a heart of gold! There was some serious depth and weight to the auto biographical sections of Billy's story drawing on his violent youth and his time spent at war. The character development as always is flawless.

Half way through the story we are introduced to an unexpected character and this ends up taking the story to a whole other level. The story becomes incredibly dark. Although the novel does not involve any supernatural horror the actions of people throughout the book are just as terrifying.

Stephen King is a true artist. I can’t get enough of this hard-core crime noir vibe he is giving us of late. The book has a dreamy nostalgic tone throughout and I got shivers when a certain hotel made a cameo ;)

If I write anything more I’ll spoil the story, just read this. Everyone. It’s fantastic!

Highly recommend 👌🏻

[Matt · Rating 3 out of 5]

“‘The price on this one is very right. You could do it and spend the rest of your life someplace warm. Drinking pina coladas in a hammock.’ [Nick] busts out the big grin again. ‘Two million. Five hundred thousand up front, the rest after.’

Billy’s whistle isn’t part of the act, which he doesn’t think of as an act but as his dumb self, the one he shows to guys like Nick…It’s like a seatbelt. You don’t use it because you expect to be in a crash, but you never know who you might meet coming over a hill on your side of the road. This is also true on the road of life, where people veer all over the place and drive the wrong way on the turnpike.

‘Why so much?’ The most he’s ever gotten on a contract was seventy K. ‘It’s not a politician, is it? Because I don’t do that.’

‘Not even close.’

‘Is it a bad person?’

Nick laughs and shakes his head, and looks at Billy with real affection. ‘Always the same question with you…’”
- Stephen King, Billy Summers

Billy Summers is a book I probably wouldn’t have picked up if it didn’t have Stephen King’s name at the top of the front cover. And if I had picked it up, I certainly wouldn’t have finished. This novel is an inconsistent stew of tired setups, poorly developed characters, and so many logical gaps that this is mostly a hole, with bits of plot floating around.

But of course this is written by Stephen King, who is not simply one of the world’s bestselling authors – a list that includes a lot of disposable fiction – but the creator of numerous unforgettable masterpieces. Based on reputation alone, this is worth checking out.

Ultimately, I found Billy Summers to be a mess, lacking rhythm and coherence. It feels more like three books stuck together to form one big one. Unfortunately, out of the three parts, only one shows that rare King spark of genius. Yet, at over five-hundred overstuffed pages, no one can accuse King of phoning this thing in. Furthermore, he has gotten to the point where even his failures are worth studying, if only to decide where it fits into his larger body of work.

***

Because this is such a shaggy, shambling novel, taking an incredibly long time for its true purpose to be revealed, it is difficult to summarize without venturing into spoiler-land. Suffice to say, Billy Summers is focused on the title character, a former Marine sniper who served in Iraq, and has now become a professional hitman.

The animating event in Billy Summers is Billy’s decision to accept a contract to kill a fellow hitman, who has been arrested in Los Angeles for murder, and is set to be extradited to the fictional town of Red Bluff in an unnamed southern state.

Right away, two things about Billy are worth mentioning.

First, Billy wants out, and this is going to be his “last job.” The criminal’s last job is among the hoariest of formulas, and King spends a lot of time mentioning that, apparently operating under the belief that acknowledging a cliché somehow freshens it. In reality, this has become its own kind of cliché.

Second, Billy only kills “bad guys.” Again, the criminal with a code is an exhausted trope, and King does nothing to breathe any life into it. If you are expecting King to meditate deeply on “bad” and “good,” you will be disappointed. The moral paradigm of Billy Summers never gets more complicated than black-and-white, decent-and-evil.

***

Billy Summers exists in King’s expanded Castle Rock universe, the alternate world that contains Derry, Jerusalem’s Lot, and Shawshank Prison. We know this because there is an extended – and jarringly unnecessary – callback to one of King’s most famous earlier works. Despite the existence of ghosts, vampires, and other supernatural horrors in King-land, Billy Summers is putatively grounded in basic human reality. Thus, it has to make at least some objective sense.

It does not.

***

Confining myself only to the first third of the novel, there are still enough eyeroll moments to cause a pretty serious headache.

It starts with the plan, which is entirely idiotic and doomed to abject failure from the start. To wit: Billy is supposed to kill this incarcerated hitman in Red Bluff while he is being transferred from a jail van to the courthouse for an arraignment. In order to be ready to take this shot, everyone agrees that Billy should live near Red Bluff so that he can be ready whenever the target is extradited.

This is nonsensical, of course. There is absolutely no reason for Billy to wait around town while the target fights extradition. All it does is exponentially increase the likelihood of arrest.

Not only does Billy come into town months in advance, but he does so in the loudest way possible. He is given a memorably unsubtle cover story of a writer; he is given a leased office space; he is introduced to the security guard, and has his picture taken; he spends weeks at the office, getting his fingerprints and DNA everywhere; he meets dozens of people, and even sleeps with one. Instead of taking a small, unobtrusive apartment, he moves into a neighborhood, and immediately insinuates himself into the lives of all his neighbors (which leads me to believe that King no longer knows how neighborhoods work).

For some reason, everyone – including Billy – agrees that embedding oneself in a community preparatory to first-degree murder is a great idea. This is worth noting, as everything that happens in Billy Summers is driven by Billy’s poor decision making, which is usually prefaced by Billy’s realization that he is making a poor decision. Billy falls into the character trap I call the Idiot-Genius Paradox. This is when you have a protagonist who is smart enough to get himself out of any corner, but is also too dumb to avoid corners in the first place.

This is all patently absurd, but easily explicable as a function of King’s obsession with writers, which itself is an offshoot of his obsession with himself.

***

The writer’s plight is one of Stephen King’s most treasured recurring themes. Whether it’s Jack Torrance or Paul Sheldon, King often presents the creative process as a herculean intellectual effort, deserving of our awe and praise.

To that end, big chunks of Billy Summers – as in Misery – are devoted to a book-within-a-book. Yes, that’s right. Once Billy agrees to take on the ridiculous persona of a first-time novelist, he actually decides to write one.

So, while we wait for Billy’s target to arrive – and while Billy makes sure that everyone in Red Bluff can positively identify him as the eventual shooter – we get an extended sequence in which King takes a crack at a war novel.

The thing is, the book-within-a-book sort of works, and I initially thought that Billy Summers might have been a Trojan horse, an unapologetically cheap genre vehicle for King to deliver an entirely different kind of tale than he typically does.

But then King switches things again, and not for the better.

***

King is such a natural storyteller that his weaknesses and tics – the pop-cultural spew, the fat-shaming, the navel gazing – are all usually forgivable. Sometimes, the excess is part of the charm. In Billy Summers, though, I was incredibly aware of the shoddy construction.

I’ve already noted the issues with common sense and characterizations. Beyond that the pacing is all off, and can be roughly capitulated as: extended introduction; long lull; crackerjack action sequence; long lull; a change in plans; a really long lull; a ludicrous and nonsensical action sequence; another long lull; an even more ludicrous and nonsensical action sequence; and then the wrap up. King is also unusually sloppy with regard to narrative imperatives, waiting until late in the third act to reveal the true villain, by which point there’s not enough time to get the audience to care.

Perhaps realizing that things were not working perfectly, King engages in some trickery that he telegraphs with his numerous – and a bit insufferable – literary references. Whether this is enough to save the book, or whether it’s just a sign of desperation, is a personal preference. It didn’t save Billy Summers for me.

***

Stephen King has gotten to the point where he can scratch out a drunken limerick on a napkin and not only get it published, but end up on the bestseller lists. With a half-billion in the bank, he can safely take a risk. In a way, Billy Summers is low-key daring, a weird and unwieldy tome constructed entirely of spare parts. Still, at this stage in his career, it’d be nice to see him go outside his comfort zone, exploring new ideas rather than revisiting the same old motifs.

[Sarah ♡ (let’s interact!) · Rating 5 out of 5]

Billy Summers is not an all-out horror story from King, it’s about an assassination and has a side-story about the Iraq war.
The most horrifying thing here is the evil actions of men. You’re left hoping that the more vile characters here get their just desserts…
It took me around 200 pages to properly get into it, when the character of Alice was introduced is when the story really picks up the pace for me. It’s as though the spark really comes back into King’s writing at this turning point and it makes me nostalgic. From then on, it’s classic King style at his best. Although Chapter 10, when the hit takes place, is also really good and fast-paced.
Of course there are some Trump jabs thrown in throughout and they work well.

The way Billy and Alice bond by him helping her through panic attacks (he clearly has struggled with some PTSD from the war) by singing the nursery rhyme Teddy Bear’s Picnic is surprisingly sweet. He had to use this tactic to help his comrades out at war too. After what happens to Alice, she is really going to have a hard time coming to terms with that and Billy senses that.
The duo work really well, and I like the interactions between Bucky and Alice as well.

Can we take a minute to (ambiguously) discuss THAT ending please !?! My jaw was on the floor, honestly you are best going into this one as blind as possible, PLEASE try to avoid spoilers for the ending.
In fact, I was pretty captivated by the last 30 or so pages. In my opinion, they were damn near perfection. Solidified me rating this higher than a 4, even if I did find the start a tad slow.
It’s made me want to check out even more of King’s crime-based novels as this one is so well done.

”When I was writing, I forgot to be sad. I forgot to worry about the future. I forgot where I was. I didn’t know that could happen.”

4.5 Stars, rounded up to a 5.

tw:// the aftermath of a horrific assault on Alice

[Melissa ♥ Dog/Wolf Lover ♥ Martin · Rating 3 out of 5]

Oh I love to be different!



I’m not going to unhaul my hardback just yet. I’m going to stew on it and maybe reread certain things. I did a skim read at one point due to boredom and King’s crap he puts in all of his new books. I’ll insert my own stuff in here somewhere to throw things off.

I have to say I loved his last book better. What was it called 🤔. I have chemo brain. That noir type book. Anyway……. *its dumb@sses like you that’s ruined the country for the next four years*. I totally loved the Billy bad person killing theme!! That would be so much fun!!!

I love Alice and all he did for her. Makes me mad and sad and happy. I guess I really only loved the last bit of the book so I’m not sure about keeping it.

I love the hell out of the cover. I loved a few things with references to other books that I didn’t skim over: Danny, Tripp, the Overlook.

Anyhoo, that’s all for now.

Mel 🖤🐶🐺🐾

[Dave Edmunds · Rating 5 out of 5]

Anyone who knows me knows who my favourite author is. Just has to be Stephen King.  The guy is a literary legend and a hero of mine. He's the reason I'm a constant reader and why I constantly have a book in my hand. Some people say he's lost his touch. Well, they can now shut the hell up!  In his latest release Billy Summers he proves he's still got it.

It's no secret that King is regarded as the big cheese in horror fiction.  With his influence on the genre and pop culture in general it's pretty much undisputable. But in the last two decades he's branched out and invested a lot of his effort in crime fiction, as he somewhat reinvents himself.  He still dabbles in the supernatural. But in books like the Bill Hodges series, the Colorado Kid and Later we've seen he has developed a passion for hard crime.  With Billy Summers he takes a walk on the dark side as we follow an assassin on his last job before he leaves the criminal underworld for good.

" It goes without saying that he has made a living working for bad people, yes, but Billy doesn’t see this as a moral conundrum. He has no problem with bad people paying to have other bad people killed. He basically sees himself as a garbageman with a gun."

Ex army sniper turned hitman Billy Summers is tired of the violence and working in criminal circles.  He's an anti hero with a moral compass as he only shoots bad guys.  The opening of the story see's Billy presented with the opportunity for a huge pay day for taking out a fellow professional killer.  What could possibly go wrong?

While waiting for his opportunity to take the shot, Billy posses as a writer. Something which he embraces by starting to write his first book.  It's an autobiography, and provides a story within a story where we get to see Billy's history, from childhood and through his time in the military.  It's quite frankly some of the best and most intense aspects of the story and a fantastic device King uses to provide the character development that's a major feature of all his novels.  I enjoyed it immensely.



I was initially reminded of 11/22/63, in the way he has to build an identity within a community whilst looking to assassinate an individual.  Although it starts out fairly formulaic, there's plenty of twists and turns and King takes us in some completely unexpected directions.  I won't go as far as to tell you what's in store, but the narrative is multifaceted with plenty to offer the reader.

The story takes on some heavy subject matter and then winds up going to some surprising places. This is an emotional ride and King uses his ability expertly to pull on the readers heart strings.  Ultimately this is a story about redemption as Billy strives to make amends for the past and turn his life around and have a positive impact, it's so engaging. Can a person who kills people of a living ever be a good person? If, like me, you're a fan of movies like Leon, you'll know how effective this can be.

"Did you know that you could sit in front of a screen or a pad of paper and change the world?"

While Billy Summers probably won’t wind up being heralded as one of his great works of fiction, it is absolutely brilliant.  The sumptuous character development and King's portrayal of life in small town American is a joy to behold.  King sometimes seems out of touch, children still playing monopoly rather than on I Pads, but his writing is as magnificent as ever.

King also goes deep into the art of writing.  He's famous for featuring writers in his stories, as we've seen in Salem's Lot, Misery, the Dark Half and Bag of Bones.  But a fundamental change in this one is that Billy is never writing to sell books and make money.   King instead explores how empowering and cathartic the process can be when you write for yourself. The ability to create new worlds and explore possibilities as well as relive the past. If you're a fan of writing you really will eat this up.

"The door to the past is open,” Summers reflects. “He could push it shut, latch and lock it, but he doesn’t want to. Let the wind blow in.”

My only gripe is King's political commentary. He just can't give up trying to ram it down the readers throat. Every bad character is a republican and all good guys are democrats. Trump is the antichrist and the root of all evil. It would be great if he stuck to Twitter and didn't use his books to air his political views. But honestly don't let that stop you from reading this great book.



There's also the issue of this being a slow burn and taking its time, which may present an issue for some readers. But King's writing is so good I loved those parts. His ability to dissect human behaviour and pick out those aspects that make us who we are is second to none. Yes he can terrify his reader and build suspense, but those slice of life moments are what sets him apart from other authors and this book is loaded with them. Fantastic stuff!

I'll stop there before I bore you to death. My longest review for my favourite author. He deserves nothing less. Just read the damn book and enjoy a true great who's showing us all that he's not lost it. Peace!

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Stephen King

[NILTON TEIXEIRA · Rating 3 out of 5]

2.5 stars.
I’m a big fan of Stephen King and I’ve been reading his works since my teens. I’m now 57 years old and I still enjoy his books and I confess that my expectations were too high, especially after reading amazing reviews, such as this one by Tom Nolan on The Wall Street news: “…Its pleasures are numerous, and it touches the mind, heart and nervous system in equal measure…”
Seriously?
Well… I’m the outlier.
How I struggled with this one. Throughout the book.
This one did not work for me. Not at all.
It offered me zero surprises, except that twist at the end, but by then I was more than late to throw the towel in.
There is nothing extraordinary here.
The writing is excellent, as expected, but the storyline was, in my opinion (gasp!), very boring. I did not get the thrill.
I did find everything very predictable and the characters too hollow.
I found hard to believe in the relationship between Billy and Alice.
As I’m clearly in the minority, I won’t go over the details of my disappointment.
For the prospective readers, I truly hope that you will enjoy this book like so many did.
Happy reading!

[Ashlynn Calee · Rating 5 out of 5]

6 stars actually ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

[LTJ · Rating 5 out of 5]

If you love a good suspenseful, thriller kind of a book, look no further than Billy Summers by the legendary Stephen King! There is a bit of everything in this book as once you start, you’ll enjoy the ride King will bring you on from beginning all the way to the end. I won’t ruin anything for you but this is a book you won’t be able to put down. You’ll truly want to see what ultimately happens once you’re finished reading, featuring all the characters you’ll encounter as you progress.

There are a lot of great books that have come out so far in 2021 and Billy Summers is right up there with the best of them. Yeah, it’s not a true horror classic by King but it’s a compelling crime story with characters you will grow to immediately connect with. Especially if you also love books involving the military, mafia, assassinations, and the life of a former Marines sniper with a heart of gold.

Billy Summers is 5/5 stars in my book and is something I’d recommend to anyone that’s looking for a great book to jump into that tells an original story that touches upon doing the right thing in a world filled with bad people. King does yet another phenomenal job of building up these characters, places, and delivers a fantastic crime novel you’ll never forget.

[Zoeytron · Rating 4 out of 5]

Not horror, nothing supernatural here.  Not sure how to categorize it.  It's Stephen King.  You know how adept he is at spinning a tale. 

Billy Summers.  I want to say that he is a hitman with a heart, but that sounds too icky-poo-poo.  And yet, it enters into the equation, at least in part.  A master of disguise, a magician who can seemingly disappear into thin air after an assassination has been completed.  He does not believe in fate or coincidence.  He has one last job to do.  

There are at least a couple of schools of thought with regard to Stephen King's predilection for including Easter eggs in his novels.  Some find them distracting and pompous.  I think of them as a tip o' the hat to the author's Constant Readers.  If you miss them, it doesn't hurt a thing; if you recognize them, you give a little nod to your own self.  Loved the picture in the summerhouse that mimicked the topiary beasts at the Overlook before it burned. Yep.

[TheNeverendingTBR · Rating 4 out of 5]

Billy Summers, a Iraq veteran turned professional assassin, a double crossing mobster and a whole lot in between.

This story just flows so well, the characters are loveable and it's just a really good book in my opinion.

It will be interesting seeing an adaptation put forward for this.

What I really liked also is there's a lot of references/connections to his other books like Alice Maxwell, The Overlook Hotel and Hemingford Home; I really like it when he does this.

Definitely worth a read for fans of crime/thrillers.

[Maciek · Rating 2 out of 5]

Imagine, if you will, that you're a hitman. One of the best in the business, in fact; your skills with a sniper rifle have no equal. You've just been hired by a mob,who is willing to pay you handsomely for assassinating a single target from afar. The best way to do it would be to find a good vantage point, perform the hit, and then vanish in your getaway vehicle, right? Wrong. Obviously, the best way to perform the job is to don a disguise and construct a fake identity, mingle with the local population for months, and only then actually do your job, bamboozling everyone in the process. Duh!

Billy Summers is better than The Institute , but The Institute is easily Stephen King's worst published novel, so that's not saying much. The sad thing is that it could have been a good novel, but it did not turn out to be one...once again. In it's best moments Billy Summers shows promise of greatness, but it never comes to pass; whatever hope it had quickly dies down and the best parts of the book turn out to be just okay. At its worst, it is just the latest example of the continuously deteriorating quality of King's recent work.  

Fans of the mysterious and the uncanny and those who love the exploration of the thin border between the real and the unreal that Stephen King used to do so well have nothing to look for here. Billy Summers is another of King's forays into writing thrillers, which I think he's just not very good at. His characters are boring; his pacing is off; and his plots are just not entertaining or suspenseful. It's incredibly hard to come up with original, engaging ideas in a field which sees so much competition, or even successfully dress up old ones in new clothes. Frustratingly, Billy Summers doesn't manage to do either of these things.

In fact, this latest stage in his career reminds me of what happened to another popular author, who also wrote dark, disturbing books which straddled the border between reality and science fiction - Dean Koontz. Koontz was never the writer that King is -  his prose is too often made ridiculous by his overuse of metaphors and similes. and his tendency to insert his personal beliefs into his writing eventually made me quit reading him altogether. His characters are cookie cutter, and all of his stories use the same tropes over and over, and his worlds are black and white: all his protagonists have traumatic pasts and are good and kind hearted, and his antagonists are absolutely evil. When the two come into conflict, can you guess who wins?

Having said all this, his fiction from the 1980's and early 1990's is full of genuinely interesting and engaging ideas. His plot concepts are genuinely great, and even if his delivery fails most of the time, this promise of greatness kept me coming back for more. Even though his plots are usually formulaic and his characters are always either good or bad, he had a great ability to mix the fantastic with the real, and make the two overlap in a way that I wished would be done more often. A good recent example of what I mean is the popular Netflix show Stranger Things . I always thought that Koontz was a great idea man, and that his books would benefit from being written by someone else, who would introduce more moral ambiguity into them and just write them better than he did.

And then something happened. Much like King, at a late point in his career - in his case the mid 2000's - Koontz started publishing thrillers almost exclusively. He wrote them before - most notably Intensity, which I thought was one of his best books - but now they seemed to be his main creative focus. He never completely abstained from the supernatural and the uncanny, but his books never regained the creativity they had in the 1980's and 1990's. As I read through his output, I remember thinking that his earlier, much darker books reflected the trauma that he went through in his early life, and that the outlandish, creative ideas helped him fight his own, personal demons. Perhaps at some point he realized that he has not only moved enough his past trauma, and it stopped being the main factor which drove and inspired his work up to that point; or perhaps he just became a hugely successful writer, who no longer had to heed the calls of his publishers demanding dark fiction with elements of horror, and could write whatever he wanted.

I mention all this because Billy Summers and Stephen King's recent attempts at writing similar fiction reminded me a lot of Koontz's transformation. Much of King's own personal life is reflected in his fiction; growing up in small town America, childhood hopes and traumas, the struggle with alcoholism and substance abuse. However, his recent work displays none of the charm and deep understanding of character that drove his earlier novels; perhaps he too has moved on from past traumas and they no longer haunt him as his muses? Or maybe he also is a household name, and no longer needs to listen to his publishers, because they will print anything with his name on it, as evidenced by the legion of adoring fans, who post multiple 5-star reviews full of animated GIFs meant to convey their love for its author?

Billy Summers started slow, became midlly engaging in the middle, but ultimately fizzled out at the end. To sum it up: as a character driven novel, Billy Summers fails, since none of its characters - main or otherwise - are particularly interesting. As a thriller, Billy Summers fails, because its plot is cartoonish and outlandish - thankfully, not as bad as The Institute, but we're reaching Dean Koontz level of improbable coincidences here, which is truly worrying. But most of all it fails as a Stephen King novel - aside from easter eggs alluding to his older novels, there's nothing special about this book, nothing which would make it stand out from the endless rows of generic thrillers that you can pick up at the airport or the train station before your trip and then forget afterwards. There's nothing here that sticks, that stays. Everything about this book is ultimately forgettable, and as I said it's yet another of the disappointing, latter-day King efforts.

As you'll know from the blurb, Billy Summers is a killer for hire, but only accepts the hit if his target is a truly bad guy. Unlike the protagonist of the TV show Dexter, whose vigilante crusade against criminals was ideologically motivated, Billy seems to only kill bad people for money. This was the perfect opportunity for King to create a complex and nuanced character, whose morality is neither here nor there - but he fails to do so completely, as Billy Summers is impossibly perfect and therefore perfectly boring. While Billy himself acknowledges in his mind that he is not a "good man", there is nothing to suggest otherwise - he has a heart of gold and goes out of his way for people he cares for, and as will be shown later, strangers. Billy is such a goody two shoes that if he wasn't a killer for hire, he'd probably be a saint, and King doesn't manage to find his way out of this absurdity. We are obviously meant to empathize with Billy, because he's given a very complex backstory - for the absurd purpose of maintaining months-long cover for his job (reminder: he never needed to develop any sort of relationship with his target, or even get physically close to him) he pretends to be a writer (yes, really) and writes a memoir, in which he describes his childhood spent in a foster home and later war experiences in Iraq. Many readers found Billy's backstory to be dull and distracting from the main plot, but I felt otherwise; for me, Billy's childhood is probably the best part of the whole novel, and the only one where I felt real emotion emerging between characters. However, he inevitably grows up, and the later part of his memoir - dealing with his experience as a soldier in Iraq - did not have the same impact on me; the childhood part could have easily been based on Stephen King's own experiences while growing up, or those of someone he knew; obviously he never fought in Iraq, and I doubt many of his close friends did. In the acknowledgments section he thanks Bing West for his book,  No True Glory, an account of the battle of Fallujah. The difference between the two is that West is a combat veteran, who not only saw action in multiple conflicts, but spent weeks on the frontlines in Iraq and talked to dozens of people involved in that war, from ordinary soldiers to top-tier policymakers. West's interest was to preserve the account of this war for posterity; while reading King's obviously fictionalized account of Billy's time in Iraq, I couldn't help but feel that it felt cheap, almost exploitative. Actual soldiers went through experiences like these and worse, but their names will never get even an ounce of recognition that this book does; it felt a lot like stolen valor, which is a terrible thing.

I believe that the actual plot - the assasination, the famous last job - is a ruse, meant only to introduce the context for the real plot of the novel, which begins 1/3rd into the book. This is where I hoped Billy Summers would show its true face and strength; it didn't. The sad thing is that I can see many readers giving up on the book before the true plot even kicks in, because of how milquetoast and boring it's been up to this point.. Still, to discuss it would reveal the surprises of the story, so I'll hide them behind the spoiler tag:


After successfully impersonating a writer and carrying out the hit, Billy discovers that his employer did not intend to pay him after all, and that he's the one being hunted now. Just then an unconscious young woman is unceremoniously dumped just in front of Billy's very secret safehouse by a group of young men, who have clearly raped her. Despite hiding from the authorities and the mob who ordered the job, Billy decides to literally risk his life and save the girl, who eventually wakes up and is understandably horrified; we learn her name, Alice.

This is where the book lost its chance at turning good and becoming memorable. As I mentioned before, it soon becomes obvious that Billy's relationship with Alice is the real focus of the novel, but the way it is formed and ultimately conducted is just bizarre. From Alice's convenient appearance at Billy's doorstep to her incredibly quick acceptance of him, throughout his initial physical reaction to her (I really could have done without reading about Billy's erection and how his boxers almost slipped at one time, which might have been intended as funny, but made me cringe), to Billy taking it upon himself to avenge her rape...by going to her rapists' house and raping him with a shiny object. Why would a killer on the run - and one of the best, mind - expose himself like that? And why would he choose to avenge sexual violence with more sexual violence, instead of just killing the perpetrator, which would surely make more sense - they could never hurt anyone ever again? Not to mention the fact that none of this is questioned by Alice, who approves of it and feels thankful to Billy.

It is worth mentioning that despite being violently raped (believe me, we learn exactly how violently, because Billy takes it upon himself to examine her), Alice never needs to go to a hospital. She takes the morning after pill, but the worry of potentially catching an STD never seems to cross her mind...or his.

The real kicker comes later, though. After Billy tracks down the man who set him up, he makes him reveal the name of the person who paid for his head - and after fighting and fatally injuring one his friends then trusts the word of said man and lets him go., leaving an even bigger trail behind himself. We learn that the real bad guy is a wealthy and influential media mogul, who wanted to eliminate his son, who blackmailed him...because the mogul is a secret pedophile.

What does Billy do? He decides to use Alice as bait in order to eliminate him. Alice, for whom we are led to believe he cares for, and for whom he went to such lengths for to save and "avenge". This is ridiculously stupid on multiple levels, not in the least because of ridiculously low chances of the actual plot working out, but also because of the absolute lack of resistance from Alice - who, let me say it again, has been violently raped not that long ago. Although Alice is showing signs of wanting to be independent and live her life again, she never questions Billy and is willing to follow him to the ends of the earth, no matter how stupid his ideas might be. We are led to believe that she loves him, despite hardly knowing him. The relationship between Billy and Alice would be much more interesting, if she occasionally challenged him, or if his feelings about her were more conflicted. However, up until the very end of the book she is never nothing more than his tool, and even the decisions and actions that she makes and takes herself are just means to fulfill his plan.

At some point it became obvious to me that Billy was going to die. How does this happen? In the most contrived way you could think of: the mother of a minor character he killed earlier shows up from nowhere and shoots him in the stomach, which leads to his slow death.

Personally, I think the book would be much stronger if Alice was the one character whom King would choose to kill off. Her death could teach Billy about the consequences of his own actions, and I think that the tragedy of him saving her life only to have her die because of his own doing would give him the reason to truly feel bad about himself, and be much more impactful. Instead, King has Alice finish Billy's memoirs (even in death his hold over her doesn't lessen) and "find her voice", which seemed forced and improbable. The violence and trauma that she went through - and what Billy's plan must have reminded her of - requires years of therapy to overcome, and Alice driving off into the metaphorical sunset must have felt like a slap to the face of actual rape victims, whose suffering I can't even imagine. Why is it completely forgotten and never brought up again?



In her reviews of King's novels, my friend Becky points out one recurring theme, and this time I paid attention to see if it'll appear in this one as well. And sure enough, it did: King's approach to fat people, or rather his bizarre demonizing of overweight and fat people. In this novel, a very bad character is fat, and attention is brought to the physical appearance and behavior of his fat body; one of the mobsters with whom Billy interacts is an overweight character named Giorgio Piglielli (yes, really), who is called George Pigs behind his back. It's not funny, but weird. 

This book sadly includes all the missteps of recent Stephen King fiction - attempts at modern slang that don't quite work, young characters knowing and referencing music and movies from way beyond their era, weird approach to current technology (at one point Billy leaves some money for a friend he made to cover the cost of Netflix that he watched at their apartment, which made me wonder - does Stephen King know how Netflix operates?), and, of course, about a dozen references to Donald Trump - none of them positive. I understand that he's not a fan of Trump - I'm not as well - but at this point in time he seems to live rent-free in his head, which really took me out of the story. It's like listening to a bickering old uncle, who won't shut up about politics. Mentioning Trump about a dozen times isn't enough, as one unimportant character - I think it was a woman exposing a racist sentiment towards someone - is described as possessing "a very Trumpian prejudice". These criticisms aren't even constructive - they're just thrown there offhandedly, dismissively, boring this reader and adding absolutely nothing to the story; if I wanted to read actual political analysis, I'd pick Arlie Hochschild or Thomas Frank.

Ultimately, there's nothing in Billy Summers that would make me want to give it even a lukewarm recommendation; fans will probably enjoy nods to The Shining and other novels, but these Easter eggs reminded me of a happier, better time, where Stephen King used to set trends in contemporary popular fiction instead of simply following them, and poorly. Still, I have no doubt that this book of his - like all others - will sell incredibly well, and I can already see a movie or TV adaptation being announced. I'm still happy that he is there and he is publishing; but each time I pick up his recent book I'm less and less happy with what I read.