Lots about stamp collecting but a good finish to a likable series. ( )

A redemption ending for the main character. Actually two! First it has the false ending of the character giving up on assassinations in favour of stamp collecting and then another one when he becomes some secret avenger killing bad people. Both are disappointing.

You could argue the previous book was an ending of sorts and this book only gets him out of retirement only to end it again. ( )

This review is from the perspective of one who isn't already a fan of Lawrence Block and his Keller series, but who picked up the book from a free box and gave it a try, not having read the first four books in the series. That disclaimer said: this is that strange beast, a thriller without tension. The protagonist, Keller, is a hit man and stamp collector living incognito as a New Orleans property rehabber after a botched job got his face and real name plastered all over the news. He's doing fine, but needs money—mainly to keep buying rare stamps—so he gets in touch with his old job dispatcher, a wry, affectionate lady who goes by Dot, and takes a few new hit jobs. One takes him to New York City, where he was living at the time of the botched job. Another is on a cruise ship, which would seem like a particularly poor setting for a hit, but he figures out how to do it and get away.

Keller' blends in well as a normal person, and he even has a wife whom he apparently treats well. She's not in the life, but she knows what he does, and is excited by it. Keller never gets excited, angry, or fearful, and in New York he puts himself in situations where his cover could easily be blown, such as eating at his old neighborhood cafe, just because he feels like it. But no matter how casually he goes about his life, he never seems to be in real danger of being caught, nor does he worry about it. This gives the book the tone of a light workplace comedy instead of a thriller where people get stabbed or strangled, as they do here, mostly off the page. As much time is devoted to the details of Keller's stamp collecting as to the murders he commits to support it. The collecting—he also acts as a consultant to a lady trying to sell her late husband's collection—is actually interestingly depicted.

The reader is clearly supposed to like Keller, and in the last episode of the book he accepts a hit on a 14-year-old boy in order to save the boy's life by tracking down the one who ordered the hit, and doing him or her in. He's got boundaries, you see, and killing children is just wrong. Color me unimpressed. I learned a lot about stamp collecting, though. ( )

Enjoyable finale(?) to the Keller series. ( )

I find myself more interest in the marketing of this book than its contents. Essentially it is a collection of novellas disguised as a novel. At no point is it called a novel--except in very small print on the title page--and each story represented here does keep its original title, but now each new scene is labeled as a chapter--unbroken across the book--so that the last section of the last story is Chapter 51. I can’t claim to have been misled because A) I would have bought it anyway, and B) I flipped through the book before making the purchase. Some of the stories had moments of meandering but I enjoyed them just the same. As usual. ( )