Billy Summers by Stephen King
Let start by saying I always root for Stephen King. I respect the hell out of the writer and the human being even more so. I know he is the bestselling author on the planet and doesn’t need my validation and I would have to buy a metric ton of advertising to get five minutes of his sales for my books. I am still a constant reader because of that respect even though our tastes in storytelling have changed a lot in our life-long author-reader relationship. The early books are foundational story experiences for me.
That said as we both grew older our tastes separated. Uncle Steve likes the story to surprise him and in that sense, the books he starts and finishes often are very different. I like to be in the hands of a storyteller completely in control. They know exactly the story they are telling and where they are going. That is why my favorite King novels are the ones with fixed endings, where he had no choice but to drive to that moment. The Dead Zone and Misery are prime examples.
That is not to say that have not enjoyed any of the recent output. I loved every page of his last Hard Case Crime novel Later. That wasn’t a guarantee as I am not a huge fan of first-person, although King is one of the best at it as he NEVER cheats the form. What worked in his favor was the shorter novel length.
I often sound like a broken record suggesting there is a good novel 200 pages in most cases with SK but I should explain. I am never bored reading these pages I just think in the end much of that stuff could be done more concisely. Again this is how we have grown apart, but I am not alone in thinking this author is at his best in short stories and novellas.
Without giving away spoilers the absolute most interesting part of this story is the twist ending. I also felt it shouldn’t be the twist. It should have been the second and third acts. I felt this was what the story should have been built on. I will come back to that when I get to spoilers.
The title character Billy Summers is an Iraq war vet, who was a sniper. He was a good one and back from the war he struggled with PTSD. His solution was to use his skills and he become an assassin who makes a point to take gigs to shoot bad people. At first, I thought. Awesome a rare King novel without the main character who is not a writer. The trick was on me because Billy’s next job he has to pretend to be a writer and decides to become a method writer.
So I get the spark for SK was the idea was a trained killer, with PTSD learns to write by telling his story while waiting to shoot someone. There is a chance to do meta-commentary on the writing process like Misery did. If that actually happened in this book I missed it. King does a great job in crafting those moments showing Billy’s growth as a writer. He pulled off that trick the problem is those parts absolutely lost me. It gave background to the character but was not connected to the narrative and didn't drive the story.
Those moments were the least interesting moments of the book for me. There is some icky stuff involving a sexual assault victim the Billy saves. There were details we didn’t need about the victim’s wounds, there was one thing that Billy does that well-intentioned that is just NOT OK. It was because of that I noticed something strange. He should never have gotten into bed with the victim, and if he hadn't it would avoid the awful scene where Billy apologizes for his morning boner. No, no. Just no.
The young woman Alice is 21 and since King has written so many younger women mysteriously attracted to older I felt that vibe. Then I had to remind myself no Billy is probably only in his thirties. I think the reason I had to remind myself is that he doesn’t come off like a young man. There are plenty of ways he could subtle place Billy in that generation, the music he listens to, the movies he grew-up on, anything. I didn’t notice that.
I also think it was a mistake to try and make Billy a good person. It kinda negates the Alice storyline, the only reason that needs to be there is to show Billy’s growth. He is shooting people for money, it is a more interesting arc if he is a dirtbag who saves Alice and then is betrayed by the man who hired him. That is not surprising but the reason is interesting.
The result is not a bad read just a meh. If this had been a shorter hard case crime novel I think it would have worked. I suspect that is where this idea started. I also think if you lose Alice and leave Billy alone with his story one where the blurred lines between his mission, betrayal, and exposing the story to the public would have made a better novel too.
I don’t really want to get too deep into spoilers but one thing. The twist is that this story that is one part American Sniper goes full Succession, and has some interesting commentary on Fox news media moguls and such. I think this is the story itself, not just a twist. This aspect coupled with a meta-novel in the novel, where Billy becomes a lone target on the run with only his book to express himself too, on the run with his life and story both as targets to expose the truth could have been something.
None the less I gave it three stars because I was never bored.
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