Mark Sullivan (AnonymeInc@webtv.net)
Mon, 30 Aug 1999 13:55:43 -0400 (EDT)
Some time ago, I wrote in praise of Terrill Lankford's
Shooters. I finally got around to reading his second book,
Angry Moon. It's at least as good as the first.
Angry Moon starts off as a very satisfying "assassin thinking
better of his career choice" story. Needless to say, he has
to make one last hit. Like Grosse Pointe Blank, it starts
with the iffy premise that someone sociopathic enough to
become a highly successful hit man would have enough of a
conscience to have this kind of crisis of faith, but that's
one of those disbeliefs fans willingly suspend when reading
this genre. Like John Woo/Chow Yun Fat's The Killer the hit
man's employers do not intend to let their contractor quit
the business. And, of course, the last hit is on the man who
taught our anti-hero everything he knows. So far, we have the
making's of a very good hit man thriller.
As in Shooters, Terrill focuses on a suspect hero, but makes
him sympathetic by pitting him against worse creatures,
without his code of honor. And the first half is a very good
thriller, full of very specific detail to led verisimilitude,
kind of like Stark's Parker novels. That believability built
on concrete detail becomes crucial when things begin to get a
bit surreal. Our anti-hero begins to suspect his own sanity
when he finds it very hard to kill his mentor, who is turning
the whole thing into a game of cat and mouse. I don't want to
give any more away, but suffice it to say Terrill has
constructed the book beautifully to get readers to stretch
the bounds of their disbelief.
Highly recommended.
Mark
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