Nick besides tells Billy that the person who ordered the shoot was Roger Klerke, a affluent serviceman who owns an categorization of media companies. Roger originally hired Joel Allen to kill his son, Patrick Klerke. Roger has a predilection for very young girls which Patrick had learned about, and he managed to get photograph attest of it. then, when Patrick had learned that Roger was n’t planning on passing his ship’s company to him, he had lashed out by blackmailing Roger. At Nick ‘s estate of the realm, Billy pretends to be a migrant worker who is there to deliver garden supplies. He has to kill or injure a bunch of Nick ‘s men, including seriously injuring a guy named Frank whose mother Marge besides works for Nick. Billy manages to extract a predict from Nick to pay the money owed and to tell people that Billy is dead. When it ‘s time to hit the road, Billy first goes to confront Alice ‘s attackers. He demands that two of them apologize to her over the telephone, and then he sodomizes the last one ( who was the one lured her there ) with an object. After that, Billy and Alice head for a place in Colorado to meet with Bucky, who is Billy ‘s “ agent ” and the only person Billy in full trusts, and to plan how to go after Nick. As Billy continues writing his report, he writes about his experiences in the military and discovering that he was quite a talented sniper. He besides writes about an incident in Fallujah where he and his buddies were sent to check out a big theater and a majority of them were killed there. One of the survivors, Johnny Capps, former hooked Billy up with his first job as a gunman. While Billy is trying to remain out of sight, he sees a young charwoman get dumped out of a truck onto the street, drugged and half-dead. not wanting to attract police attention to the street, he reluctantly goes out to save her. It turns out Alice, 20, had equitable been sexually assaulted by a group of men. Alice recognizes Billy as the person on the news as the taw, but she ends up wanting to stay with him for a while. In give day, the shoot goes off without a hitch. Billy evades the transportation system truck and gets away by disguising himself as one of the office workers in the build. He then goes to hide out at an apartment he previously rented under another diagnose, Dalton Smith, where he intends to lay low for a while since there is a media craze surrounding the shoot. When Nick does n’t pay him after the shooting is done and alternatively demands to know where he is, Billy knows that his suspicions about Nick were decline. He besides soon learns there ‘s a $ 6M amplitude on his head. While he waits for the big day, Billy besides starts writing the juke book his character is supposed to be writing, fair as a way to kill time because he wants to. He changes all the names, but writes about his own story, starting with his short sister being beaten and killed by his mother ‘s drink boyfriend when he was 11. truncheon ended up finding a accelerator and killing the boyfriend. He by and by ended up in foster care and then joined the Marines at 17. Billy gets leery when Nick offers up a pickup design for after the hit takes stead, since typically he leaves that up to Billy to figure out. Nick ‘s design involves Billy escaping in a city transit truck that will have person waiting to drive him away. Billy suspects that Nick intends to then kill him. rather, Billy starts to formulate his own design. The job requires Billy to spend quite some time as a nonmigratory in a humble town where some office outer space has been rented out for Billy ‘s use. The cover floor is that Billy is a writer named David Lockridge who has been tasked by his agentive role to stay there and go to the office and write each day in an undertake to get him to meet his deadline. The office has a direct see to the courthouse, where Joel will finally be taken to be arraigned for mangle. Billy is meant to shoot him at that time and then disappear. The aim, Joel Allen, is besides a gunman. He ‘s wanted in the area for murdering a ridicule who won a bunch together of money off of him in a poker game. Joel has been claiming that he has some valuable information that the police wants in order to make some type of hand, and obviously person does n’t want him talking, which is why Billy has been hired to take him out. Billy Summers is a gunman and early Marine sniper who only accepts jobs killing “ bad ” men and wants to retire wholly. Nick, who Billy has worked for many times before, offers Billy one last job — one that pays $ 500K upfront and $ 1.5M after it ‘s done. The one-paragraph interpretation : Billy Summers, 44, is a gunman who only kills “ bad ” men. He accepts one final job ( from Nick ) before he retires with a major payday attached. however, Billy starts to suspect Nick intends to kill him when the speculate is done. certain enough, the job goes a planned, they try to kill him, but Billy gets away. He soon meets Alice, 20, who has just been sexually assaulted, and he helps her punish her attackers ( non-lethally ). then, Billy confronts Nick. Nick tells him the one who ordered the job was Klerke ( who wanted Billy absolutely since it was one less informal end ). Klerke likes unseasoned girls, so Alice dresses up as a adolescent so she and Billy can confront Klerke. Alice shoots Klerke. One the way out, the mother of one of the guys Billy injured comes out of nowhere and shoots Billy. He dies. however, as the details of it come together, he knows something about it feels identical wrong. Billy Summers is a gunman and a deck former Marine sniper. He ‘s fix to retire, but before he does, he accepts one last job that offers a huge payday that would set him up comfortably for his post-hitman life. Book review and outline for Billy Summers by Stephen King, A thriller about a gunman doing one death job that goes sourness. I had decided I was going to take a violate from reading Stephen King novels ( for no particular reason other than feeling like I ’ d read quite a few of them recently ), but then everyone was saying how great Billy Summers is and so I felt like had to check it out for myself. thus, here we are .
With Billy Summers, Stephen King venture out of the kingdom of horror that he ’ sulfur known for, as he ’ mho done quite a few times earlier. alternatively, this is basically a straight-up thriller-slash-suspense novel. In it, the titular Billy Summers is a train sniper who works as a gunman. He takes one last occupation before retiring — one with an enticingly large payday — but it goes wrong .
In Billy Summers, I think King does a good job of building up cliff-hanging scenes, and the writing itself is of course all right, which is what you ’ five hundred expect from Stephen King. Though to be honest, I felt it a was fiddling sloppier than his short, more streamlined, works .
In general, I found the book very engaging through the first third of it or so. however, I soon realized how predictable it was becoming and started losing matter to. ( Discussed promote in the Spoiler-ish Thoughts section at the end. )
In the book, King calls out specifically how hitmen doing “ one last subcontract ” that goes ailing is a very park trope, so I was hoping it meant that he intended to take his floor in a new and interest direction .
unfortunately, it plays out reasonably much like you ’ five hundred expect and turns in to a bunch of other tropes. For exercise, when they ’ re the supporter, hitmen in books and movies are about always rigidly principled, specially when it comes to women and children, which is why you ’ re supposed to like them, and Billy Summers is no different .
I imagine if this koran had been authored by a debut generator, I possibly would have had lower expectations and a more kindly watch on it, but I guess I expected more from Stephen King. I ’ m used to being surprised and delighted by his plot machinations, so I was hoping this one would be the same .
There ’ south besides some plot justifications that I thought were pretty questionable ( besides discussed in the Spoiler-ish Thoughts ), which was distracting for me. It ’ s not so far-fetched that the script is impossible to enjoy or anything like that, but I would have preferred tighter plot .
besides, as the fib progresses, Billy crosses paths with Alice, a twenty-year-old girl who has just been sexually assaulted and is left barely active by the side of the road. She ’ sulfur ends up being semi-in-love with Billy and is tidal bore to be a separate of his world. Their partnership was a small farfetched in my opinion, seeming more like male fantasy than anything else, but whatever .
Read it or Skip it?
I didn ’ t love it. It thought it was excessively long-winded, not peculiarly imaginative, and the plot felt like a mish-mosh of movie tropes and three classify stories smushed together. After the bespeak where we find out what went incorrectly, from there the record played out precisely as I expected it to, with no real surprises or plot turns ( with one exception, discussed in the Spoiler-ish Thoughts below ) .
Billy ’ s besides an overly-perfect character — an impossibly efficient killer who is fine-looking, principled, sympathetic, who loves read, writing and Émile Zola, and who has a barely-legal womanhood a fraction of his long time fawn over him — that smacks of wish-fulfillment .
I found it more cliff-hanging in the beginning when there was more of a possibility that the plot could potentially take an matter to or unexpected turn, but once I realized this was not that kind of book, my enthusiasm waned a lot .
To be fair, based on other reviews, it appears enough of other people are enjoying this book more than I did, so possibly your mileage will differ. And as mentioned above, I think I had higher expectations for this book since I do like Stephen King, and so I ’ m probably being a piece harsher about it than I would if it had been published by a less have writer .
See Billy Summers on Amazon .
Spoiler-ish Thoughts
SPOILERS START HERE. YOU ’ VE BEEN WARNED .
I felt throughout a huge majority of the koran that there were good no surprises in this book. Basically what happens is, Billy takes a job and suspects that they ’ re going to try to kill him when it ’ sulfur over, so he makes a eventuality plan. then a hundred fifty dollar bill pages by and by, the job goes precisely as planned and yes it turns out they planned to kill him precisely as expected, but his eventuality plan works out perfectly .
Of course, predictably, Billy wants to confront Nick about it, and he suspects person else is in truth pulling the strings on this subcontract. so, Billy confronts Nick, which goes precisely vitamin a mean, he gets precisely the information he wants, and yes Nick confirms that his suspicions were right .
then, predictably, Billy goes to find the ridicule pulling the strings, Klerke, and plans to kill him. That besides goes off without a enlistment .
Billy spends a lot of time fretting about contingencies that could happen and what could go wrong, but nothing ever does. I good got so bored with this. The endorsement on the book says “ So what could possibly go amiss ? How about everything. ” But then in the book nothing always goes amiss ? ! The only matter that went incorrect was entirely foreseeable and so Billy planned for it, and his plans went off without a hitch .
( Yes, I know there ’ mho besides his military backstory and Alice ’ s retaliation project in there, but neither of those things actually impact the main plotline in any meaningful way, thus any. )
Okay, so obviously there ’ second one exception to all this — right field after it ’ s all over, Marge shoots him, which I guess I would consider reasonably unexpected, but it ’ s thus egregiously un-clever and cheap ( lady who hates him coming out from nowhere to shoot ) that there ’ second nothing very satisfying about it .
then, of class we ’ re led to think Billy survived when it turns out he ’ randomness actually dead. I wouldn ’ t say I was shocked by this twist, but certain, all right, I would at say at least it made things more concern. however, after reading through 500 pages of ZERO surprises, I had a arduous time being excessively impressed by that. And Billy dying in such a bum way after all of this is just so bathetic .
That all said, one of my biggest issues was that the wholly justification for Billy ending up in this site was so rickety. Basically, Klerke wants him dead to avoid a duplicate of the Joel Allen site, but it seems indeed unnecessary ? If Billy is killing Joel from afar in a abbreviated moment when he ’ mho in transit there ’ s no argue for Billy to find out about any of the blackmail data that Klerke is worried about. furthermore, if Klerke should want anyone dead, it would make 100x more sense for him to kill Nick or Giorgio or Judy, not Billy, since Billy knows nothing and all these other people know all about it .
Billy Summers Audiobook Review
Narrated by : Paul Sparks
Length : 16 hours 55 minutes
I started out listening this on audiobook, but didn ’ metric ton love the narrator and switched to reading it alternatively. I thought the screen of clip room the guy spoke was kind of annoyance and made it less enjoyable to listen to, so I gave up on it pretty early on .
I get the feel he was trying to sound kind of emotionally detached to tap into that war-weary, loner gunman vibration, but it didn ’ metric ton work for me .
Hear a sample of the Billy Summers audiobook on Libro.fm .
