Imagine if Stephen King decided to write an episode of The Sopranos and gave his unique spin to that mega popular HBO series that aired between 1999 and 2007. The end result would be Billy Summers, his latest best-selling novel.
Billy Summers is one of King’s occasional “change-of-pace” novels, where he decides to break away from the horror genre that he is best known for, and dabbles in another literary genre to prove that he doesn’t have to be pigeonholed as a writer of horror stories. So far, he has written fantasy, hypothetical history, memoir, baseball, dystopian, short story, police/detective thrillers, western and pop culture books in both fiction and nonfiction formats. And in every case, those books have gained critical and commercial success.
And with the release of Billy Summers, he can add it to that impressive “change-of-pace” list. This time, he dabbles with organized crime and mobsters, but with a little bit of heart in it.
The title character is a much sought-after career freelance mob hit man/sniper, who only kills people who are bad human beings who deserve death by the bullet. However, after years in the paid killer profession, Billy has decided to retire, but accepts one more contract hit before putting away his guns for good. That last contract has Billy use his sniper skills that he developed while serving in Iraq to neatly gun down a mob informant in a New England town called Midwood, in front of its courthouse on the day he is to testify against a major mob figure. And for his efforts, Billy is going to take home a cool $2 million fee.
With the precision of a military operation – and with the help of several mobsters who hired him for this job – Billy establishes a rather foolproof front that gives him a reason to be in this town. First, he establishes two false identities: as writer David Lockridge, who sets himself up in an office to “write” his “novel” as he establishes his sniper’s post in the Gerard Tower, the building situated across the court house; and Dalton Smith, a rather slovenly local (which he pulls off thanks to his mastery of disguise) who lives in a rather rundown area of Midwood.
Second, he establishes a primary and secondary network of communications through laptops purchased at big box stores and a number of disposal cell phones, so that he won’t leave any traces behind. And third, and the more reluctant part of this masquerade for him, Billy makes himself through his disguises a familiar member of the local community both in the neighborhood where he lives and in the Gerard Tower where he “works”.
While he plans the logistics of this final contract hit and waiting for the day it happens, Billy/David decides to make use of one of his laptops and actually writes his “novel”, which later turns into a bona fide memoir. Thanks to this extra perspective that King provides the reader, we find out about Billy Summers’ life and the difficult circumstances that turned him into a mafia sniper/hit man, from his tough upbringing as a child, to the hell he experienced as a decorated soldier in the midst of the deadly fighting in the Iraqi desert.
However, things are not so easy when Billy sees the job through. Pre-arranged escape plans go awry and he discovers a double cross plot has been arranged against him by his underworld employers. And to top that all off, he finds a young woman named Alice, who attends the local college, and is unceremoniously dumped out of a van outside Billy’s apartment after she was brutally gang raped by three male college classmates. While the clock is ticking for Billy to exact his revenge by the mob bosses who hired him, he nurses Alice back to health. Later, a sense of trust evolves between the two, as Alice becomes a somewhat accidental accomplice to Billy’s cross-country act of vengeance.
Billy Summers contains no specters, ghosts, unspeakable horrors, ancient curses or supernatural phenomena guaranteed to scare the living daylights out of you. This is a mob story – with all the violence, greed, revenge and cryptic deceptions that go with it – that also has a degree of humanity and introspection that goes beyond the bloodshed. King should get a lot of credit for how he has managed to go inside one aspect of the world of organized crime, and all the minutiae that they undertake to make sure a hit is carried out without a trace, and not get all bogged down and confused in the process. This is not an easy chore, but King accomplished it quite well. And the dynamic that he gradually develops between Billy and Alice in the book’s second half actually keeps the narrative afloat without having to resort to using a way too obvious manner to wrap up the story. It’s sort of like a Bonnie and Clyde scenario with a not-so violent ending.
Stephen King has done it again. He has shown that he can write an engrossing story with Billy Summers without having to scare the hell out of a reader as they turn each page.
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