The Long Kill
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- $21.99
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- $21.99
Publisher Description
‘One of Britain’s most consistently excellent crime novelists’ The Times ‘[Reginald Hill] keeps one on the edge of one’s wits throughout a bitterly enthralling detection thriller’ Sunday Times
Where better for a hitman to retire than in the Lake District, where the air is healthy and the scenery spectacular? And when Jaymith meets attractive young widow, Anya Wilson, he can’t believe his luck.
But Jaysmith soon discovers that settling down to the quiet life is not as easy as it seems. His old employers aren’t keen to lose him, his past is always lying in wait, and when Anya introduces him to her family, Jaysmith realizes there’s no way out.
He’s back in business, and it makes little difference that this time it’s to defend, not destroy. However you wrap it up, his one accessible talent is the Long Kill.
Reviews
‘Reginald Hill writes brilliantly throughout, creating memorable characters with chiselled skill’
Sunday Times
‘Hill is among the most entertaining and invigorating detective novelists writing at present’
TLS
About the author
Reginald Hill was brought up in Cumbria, and has returned there after many years in Yorkshire. With his first crime novel, A Clubbable Woman, he was hailed as ‘the crime novel’s best hope’ and twenty years on he has more than fulfilled that prophecy.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Eminent British author Reginald Hill, writing as Patrick Ruell, tells a feverishly suspenseful story here. A political assassin identified only by the terse surname Jaysmith, is sent to England's Lake District, where he misses his target, Steven Bryant. Since his forte, "the long kill'' with the aid of a telescopic lens, is becoming impossible due to his failing eyesight, he phones in his resignation to the man he knows as Jacob in London. Later, the ex-gunman buys a cottage and meets a young widow, Anya Wilson, her small son and her father, whom Jaysmith recognizes as Bryant. The future seems bright for Jaysmith as he and Anya plan marriage, but Jacob suddenly materializes with armed hirelings to dispose of Steven and Anya. Alerted to a conspiracy, Jaysmith braves overwhelming odds in the shoot-out that caps the novel's shocking disclosure. This taut thriller is a tour de force enhanced by the author's evocations of the English countryside's natural splendor.
