Killer, Come Hither by Louis Begley

Published by Doubleday/Nan A. Talese on April 7, 2015

Killer, Come Hither appears to be an attempt to craft a literary thriller. The prose is of reasonably high quality but the key element of a thriller -- suspense -- is lacking while the prime ingredient of literary fiction -- characterization -- is neglected.

In the wake of 9/11, Jack Dana leaves behind the call of academia to follow in the military tradition of his father and grandfather. He later leaves the Marines to become a novelist. Dana is working on his third book as the story unfolds.

The story involves the apparent suicide of Dana's beloved Uncle Harry. Harry was a lawyer whose principle client meddled in politics and likely engaged in widespread fraud and corrupt practices. Dana and one of the associates in Harry's firm believe that Harry's death was orchestrated to prevent Harry from exposing some ongoing crime in which his wealthy client was engaging. The coincidental death of the lawyer's secretary fuels their suspicion.

Against that background, Dana decides to make it his mission to identify the killer and to engage in a revenge killing. The novel takes Dana on a straightforward path to uncover a motive and spot a killer. It is too straightforward to create tension or a sense of mystery. Since Dana has the help of a CIA agent, finding the truth is easy. The CIA agent gives Dana some ridiculous gadgetry that turns up in a climactic scene for no apparent reason other than Dana's desire to use the kind of gadgetry Q would have furnished to James Bond. That bit of silliness at least enlivens a story that is mostly dull and predictable.

The police, who apparently saw nothing odd about Harry's unlikely suicide or his secretary's coincidental death, are just as indifferent to the mayhem Dana causes. I was equally indifferent to Dana. He has a typical "thriller hero on a vendetta" personality -- that is, almost none at all. He gets involved in a romance because that's what thriller heroes do. He seeks vengeance because that's what thriller heroes do. He has apparently never had an original thought in his life, making Dana a dull boy. Worse, he is a dull boy telling a dull, predictable, unimaginative story -- although he does so in prose that is the novel's only saving grace.

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