{"id":594,"date":"2013-02-18T10:00:42","date_gmt":"2013-02-18T18:00:42","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.bukkhead.com\/blog\/?p=594"},"modified":"2013-02-11T12:50:18","modified_gmt":"2013-02-11T20:50:18","slug":"hit-man-review-on-goodreads","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.bukkhead.com\/blog\/2013\/02\/18\/hit-man-review-on-goodreads\/","title":{"rendered":"Hit Man&#8211; review on Goodreads"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a style=\"float: left; padding-right: 20px;\" href=\"http:\/\/www.goodreads.com\/book\/show\/380563.Hit_Man\"><img decoding=\"async\" alt=\"Hit Man (Keller, #1)\" src=\"http:\/\/d.gr-assets.com\/books\/1348425989m\/380563.jpg\" border=\"0\" \/><\/a><a href=\"http:\/\/www.goodreads.com\/book\/show\/380563.Hit_Man\">Hit Man<\/a> by <a href=\"http:\/\/www.goodreads.com\/author\/show\/17613.Lawrence_Block\">Lawrence Block<\/a><\/p>\n<p>My rating: <a href=\"http:\/\/www.goodreads.com\/review\/show\/533009558\">3 of 5 stars<\/a><\/p>\n<p>I stumbled across Lawrence Block when I was a young man, one of the <em>Burglar<\/em> novels. I read all of the ones I could find, and anything else I could find by him, mostly in libraries and used bookstores. (I eschewed the Matthew Scudder novels, however, as I couldn\u2019t find the first one and didn\u2019t want read them out of order). As a result, Block ended up having a fairly significant influence on me as a reader. Books had to be clever without being too self-indulgent, serious without being maudlin and amusing without being silly.<\/p>\n<p>As a reader, I\u2019ve grown since then, more than willing now to read self-indulgent, maudlin, silly nonsense. But when I saw that Block is to have a new <em>Hit Man<\/em> book out this month, I decided to go back and re-read the other Keller books. Just breezed through <em>Hit Man<\/em> #1 in less than 24 hours, and it was a good read.<\/p>\n<p>Block\u2019s gifted at matching his prose style to the personality of his character. Keller is simple, straightforward, almost plain, with a few idiosyncrasies to keep you interested. Same is true for the book itself\u2014 what amounts to a connected collection of short stories about a paid killer. There\u2019s not much in the way of character development, or plot for that matter. It\u2019s just an easy read, fun while it lasts, and done when it\u2019s done.<\/p>\n<p>Except, of course, it\u2019s not done\u2014I recall I did read at least one other Keller back then, before moving on and getting a degree in English and having reading ruined for me for a good ten years. I\u2019m diving into <em>Hit List<\/em> next, and then all the rest. I\u2019m not expecting fireworks, but then I\u2019m not staying up past my bed time, either.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.goodreads.com\/review\/list\/377051-jason-edwards\">View all my reviews<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Hit Man by Lawrence Block My rating: 3 of 5 stars I stumbled across Lawrence Block when I was a young man, one of the Burglar novels. I read all of the ones I could find, and anything else I could find by him, mostly in libraries and used bookstores. (I eschewed the Matthew Scudder &hellip; <\/p>\n<p class=\"link-more\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.bukkhead.com\/blog\/2013\/02\/18\/hit-man-review-on-goodreads\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &#8220;Hit Man&#8211; review on Goodreads&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-594","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-reviews"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p24y52-9A","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bukkhead.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/594","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bukkhead.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bukkhead.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bukkhead.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bukkhead.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=594"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.bukkhead.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/594\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":596,"href":"https:\/\/www.bukkhead.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/594\/revisions\/596"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bukkhead.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=594"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bukkhead.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=594"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bukkhead.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=594"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}