GatesyRead

This was one of those impulsive purchases that come from a quick search of the crime fiction section of a local bookshop. The Gunman , published earlier as The Prone Guman , is back in the shops thanks to what sounds like a fairly poor film version, starring Sean Penn, and premised (rather incorrectly) on a good man who has become a hired killer and straightened out, only to be forced to return for one last job due to circumstances beyond his control. Jean-Patrick Machette’s novel has no such redemptive character, although there is something more to the novel that the action-plot which fires it forwards. The novel’s assassin does “want out” but the powers-that-be don’t want to let him go, and betray him to a mafia family whose son he has taken out, some years back. Violence begets violence. The pay-masters are rather sinister, government agencies, with the suggestion of the Cold War behind the scenes (and largely out of sight). Rather than developing the political machinations in