One of my favourite audiobooks last year was Stephen King’s Fairytale, so I was excited to listen to this book.
Of course the subject matter is very different. This novel follows Billy (one of his many aliases) who is a killer for hire with a conscience, in that he will only kill ‘really bad guys’.
He wants to retire, and agrees to do one last job (always a red flag in fiction!). The job involves going undercover in a apartment block community where he is posing as a writer. To add credence to his cover story, Billy decides to actually write a book, which turns out to be his own memoire, which is how we the reader get his backstory in chunks as he writes it along with the present day plot.
On the whole, I really liked the book. I got a bit bored at the part in Billy’s memoires where he relived his time as a soldier and I had to grimace and hide behind my hands in a couple of the more violent or threatening scenes, but as always Stephen King is a master storyteller and character developer, and I felt invested emotionally in what happened to the protagonists.
Sarah Wray Writer 