QUICK SHOTS: Assassin's Anonymous by Rob Hart

This is a pretty new book for to me to read, hell I think I stumbled across it on Instagram. Which makes sense since Instagram is one of those places I should be hawking my book (and upcoming book The Grill-Master will be out soon-ish, folks) so I guess it works. Either way I found Assassin's Anonymous, and it seemed like it had a fun premise, so I picked up and it promptly sat around for a while until this last week when I remembered about it and discovered there's a few more entries in the series now. I move at a turtle's pace. 

I tend to like old books, both physically and content-wise. I guess I really don't like reading about cell phones and computers. Give me morse-code and walkie-talkies. But you have to shake things up every now and then and pick up one of those damned trade-paperback-sized (everything should be mass-market sized people) books and give it a whirl. Rob Hart has written a fair number of books and he's pretty fun to follow on Instagram (I do now) and while this is the first book of his I read, it won't be the last. 

The gist of Assassin's Anonymous is that Mark, formerly known as The Pale Horse, wants to give up killing folks and to do this he joins a support group of fellow killers who model themselves after Alcoholics Anonymous to give up the urges. And this being a thriller novel, things happen and suddenly we're on a globe-trotting quest as people try to kill Mark, his cat and Astrid, the underground doctor who people in Mark's line of work go to when they are bleeding...and all the while Mark has to resist the urge to become the uber-killer he once was. There's plenty of fisticuffs, chases, a nice cat, gunfire and mystery to keep you flipping the pages with ease. 

So, with a hero who can't kill it's a nice little twist that brings up some interesting narrative questions, like "how will the baddies be punished?" or "how will letting killers live come back to haunt you?" And it turns out to be a pretty fun ride. But just because he won't kill doesn't mean Hart skimps on the action, which is nicely detailed and swiftly paced. This is a very cinematic book. It's easy to imagine that this was instantly optioned by Hollywood for a show or movie. Mark's a nice protagonist and the running joke of him being the most feared assassin on the planet and not looking like Jason Statham is pretty funny. Maybe Statham will play him in the movie. 

I had a real good time with this one, maybe I need to break out of my comfort zone more and read newer stuff, now to buy the rest of his books.

And my now traditional sign-off, my first novel Gunpowder Breath is available on Amazon as an eBook!