The Perfect Kill
21 Laws for Assassins
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- $24.99
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- $24.99
Publisher Description
What is the definition of assassination? Robert Baer's boss at the CIA once told him, 'It's a bullet with a man's name on it.'
Sometimes assassination is the senseless act of a psychotic, a bloodletting without social value. Other times, it can be the sanest and most humane way to change the course of conflict: one bullet, one death, case closed.
Assassination has been dramatised by literature and politicised by infamous murders throughout history, and for Robert Baer, one of the most accomplished agents ever to work for the CIA, it's a source of endless fascination. Over several decades, Baer served as an operative, from Iraq to India and beyond. In THE PERFECT KILL, he takes us on a wildly entertaining narrative adventure through a history of political murder, interweaving his first-hand experience and his decades-long cat-and-mouse hunt for the greatest assassin of the modern age.
A true maverick with an undeniably captivating personal story, Baer pulls back the curtain to give a glimpse of the underbelly of world politics, and the quiet murderers who operate on the fringe of our society.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Former CIA agent Baer (The Company We Keep) reveals the ins and outs of the politically charged notion of assassination, as experienced through his own eventful career. He recounts a decade spent tracking the Lebanese assassin known as Hajj Radwan, and distills his knowledge into 21 pithy laws, each of which gets its own chapter. As he takes the reader from #1 "The Bastard Has to Deserve It" to #21 "Get to It Quickly," Baer argues both for and against the necessity of assassination, noting his preference for the old-fashioned, more personal approach over modern drone warfare, which he compares to phone sex: " solve the immediate problem, but they leave you unsure of what you got out of it and hungry for more." His style is candid and accessible, with a little of the American cowboy in evidence. He seems to have admired Radwan, while simultaneously wanting him dead: "although I never laid eyes on him, we were the most intimate of enemies." While the material is dry at times, it still makes for a fascinating look at a nebulous and misunderstood topic.
