Ed wrote:
"Maybe the moral implications of killing can be discussed in
Lawrence Block's Keller hit man series during the
Block-themed month. I haven't read the Keller books, but I
did recently enjoy reading Such Men Are Dangerous. I wonder
if it was warm-up act to his writing the Keller books."
Ed, have you read either of Block's other two "Paul Kavanagh"
books? They all deal with killers. The third, Not Coming Home
to You, is a fictionalization of the Charlie
Starkweather/Caril Fugate killings. But the second, The
Triumph of Evil, is specifically about an assassin. It's a
far darker take on a paid killer than the Heller books. In
some ways it reminded me of Donald Hamilton's In the Line of
Fire. In fact, there have been a whole slew of hit man books,
including Thomas Perry's two Butcher's Boy books and Loren
Estleman's Macklin trilogy that grew a fourth.
There are plenty of noir/hardboiled books about dealing out
death, from the above hit men to the revenge novels we
recently listed. There are books of killings sanctioned by
the government, both by spies and executioners.
And I'll bet there are quite a few novels that directly
engage death row, but I can't think of any (except maybe
Front Page, didn't it involve reporters trying to clear
someone about to be executed?).
Mark
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