The Shot - Philip Kerr

The Shot clocks in at 370 pages, and it took me a week to get through. For a novel, that's incredibly slow, but it was that unpleasant of a read most of the time.

It's 1960. The election race between Kennedy and Nixon is coming down to the wire, and the mob approaches Tom Jefferson, professional killer. They'd like him to kill Castro, and his brother if possible. Partially to regain their casinos, partially as a favor to the CIA. Jefferson accepts, and working for the mob has a few perks. Like getting to listen to tapes they have of JFK and his extra-marital adventures. Except one of those is wife Jefferson's wife, Mary, who shortly thereafter turns up dead. And then Jefferson vanishes. The mob, who paid him 100 grand of the quarter million for the job up front, bring in an ex-FBI agent, Jimmy Nimmo, to track Jefferson down. Nimmo concludes Jefferson might be gunning for Kennedy, and off we go, the mob trying to saving the President-elect from an angry husband.

Every character in this story is a pretty lousy human being. Which isn't surprising considering everyone is a hired killer, mobster, bent cop, or spook, but it gets tiring. If it isn't racial epithets, it's a lot of sexist or homophobic crap. Basically every female character is treated strictly as a sex object, which is too bad, some of them could have been interesting. That's pretty much all they talk about, which gets old in a hurry. Also, if I never read another character rhapsodize over how New York City is the greatest place in the world it'll be too soon.

That being said, there are a couple of nice twists that Kerr dropped hints for earlier, and there's a certain amount of tension as to whether Nimmo, the mob, and the U.S. intelligence services (once they get wind of it) can get their acts together sufficiently to do anything to stop Jefferson. Though that might work a little better if any of the characters were acting out of something other than their own self-interest. Kerr does his very best to make JFK enough of an unlikeable shithead that you can see why nobody would be rushing to save him unless there was something in it for him. Even so, the fact there isn't a single character operating under any kind of principle where they object to murder is, once again, tedious. Oh, and Nimmo and the mob tortured a guy for information and guess what? It totally worked! Because of course it did. Then they killed him anyway! Because of course they did.

My overall feeling is The Shot had an interesting idea and some decent foreshadowing, but undercut itself with a lot of disgusting, stupid bullshit that was entirely unpleasant to read.