Billy Summers

It's such a shame that Stephen King's best book—because that is what this is—is among his darkest, most messed up, most transgressive. All those excesses mar the book more than they serve it. (As does the "writing-about-writing" hangup King always has along with more than a fair share of male gaze stuff, albeit meta-investigated from both directions.)

Long story short this is a story of a hitman's last job in the vein of Brubaker or Ennis. It's hyper-melodramatic and exaggerated. It's Anne Rice does Richard Stark. As per ushe for King, the character work is amazing, which only makes all the messed up stuff hurt all the more.