Billy Summers by Stephen King

Published by Scribner on August 3, 2021

Both gritty and darkly heartwarming, Billy Summers tells the story of a contract killer. Billy assures us that he only ever killed bad people. He sees himself as a “garbageman with a gun.” Billy knows he’s also a bad person, but that’s the kind of assurance that allows a reader to perceive Billy as likable, if not admirable.

Billy works with an intermediary named Bucky. When Nick Majarian asks Bucky whether Billy is available, Bucky says that Billy is thinking about retirement but might be willing to do one more job if the price right. Nick offers the right price ($2.5 million) to shoot an inmate from an office window as the inmate is being walked from a police car to the courthouse. Nick is a middleman. He won’t reveal the name of the man who wants the inmate dead. The inmate committed senseless murders and fits Billy’s definition of a bad guy who deserves to die, so Billy takes the job.

Nick doesn’t know when the inmate will be extradited to the state where the killing is supposed to occur. Until that date arrives, Billy will occupy the office from which he’ll shoot. Nick gives him a cover identity as a writer who needs to be isolated while he finishes his novel. Billy has always wanted to write a novel, so he uses his down time to write the story of his life. Nick also rents a house for Billy. While Billy knows better than to get friendly with his neighbors, Billy is a friendly guy. He plays Monopoly with the neighbor kids and attends cookouts, knowing his neighbors will be disappointed when they learn that Billy is an assassin. The novel’s first half disappears in the rearview mirror as the story moves forward.

Billy pretends to be stupid but he’s smart enough to figure out that Nick intends to take him out when the shooting is accomplished. Billy is put off by Nick’s rude behavior. He’s also anxious not to be cheated out of a fee. The reader knows that things will not go well for Nick, but Billy’s strategy for handling the betrayal is surprising.

In the novel's second act, Billy rescues a young woman named Alice Maxwell who has just been raped. The rest of the novel develops Billy’s relationship with Alice and with Bucky as the plot pivots toward Billy’s plan to get even with the guy who wants Nick to kill him. By the end, the reader will understand why the death of the inmate was so personal to the man who funded the assassination. The explanation is plausible.

While some aspects of the story are predictable — this is far from the first novel to feature a kindly assassin as the protagonist — Steven King offers so much detail that it almost seems fresh. The characters are pretty much who the reader would want them to be. Likable characters are almost comforting in a novel of this nature. Billy feels a sense of shame for not being a better person, but he redeems himself by taking care of Alice. Bucky is a gruff old loner who redeems himself in a similar fashion. Alice matures quickly, both by surviving her rape and by helping Billy. It’s easy to bond with the key players.

King provides a story within a story by sharing the book that Billy is writing. Billy’s book focuses on his horrific war experiences. The material is again predictable, but King is such a good storyteller that it’s easy to become lost in the narrative.

Billy Summers is not a horror novel, but King gives a nod to his early years as a horror novelist by placing a character near the site of the (now destroyed) Overlook Hotel, the setting of King’s The Shining. He also suggests that a guest house near the character’s home might be haunted. It’s fun to see King paying homage to his own roots.

There’s nothing special about Billy Summers apart from the fact that Stephen King wrote it. It’s the kind of book King can probably knock out during the halftime of a Patriots game. At the same time, King’s gift at storytelling sets him apart from writers who would have turned the same story into a melodrama or a silly action novel. King evokes true emotion, particularly in the final chapters as he finds a clever mechanism to resolve the story in a couple of different ways.

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