Assassin Eighteen

by John Brownlow ★★★★☆

The sequel to 2022's Seventeen: Last Man Standing, Assassin Eighteen picks up not long after that story concluded. Our narrator and main character, Seventeen -- the greatest assassin in the world -- has removed himself from the world of assassinations-for-hire, hiding out in Sixteen's old house, biding his time until the inevitable challenger comes. He's tired, and in some ways he's ready for it to all be over. There are nights when he'll stand in front of the picture window in his living room, hoping that a bullet will come. As he says in the first line of the book, "I'm waiting for someone to kill me."

When that bullet eventually does come, it's fired by an unlikely source -- a young girl, no more than nine years old, who clearly had assistance in setting up the shot. But why would someone go to those lengths, to create a scenario that was destined to fail? After capturing the girl, Seventeen starts to unravel the mystery, and it leads him to portions of his past he'd long ago buried, and eventually to the purpose that he'd been craving in his isolation: stop a white nationalist terrorist bent on starting a nuclear war.

Like the original novel, Assassin Eighteen is action-packed, with short, staccato-burst chapters. It's plot-driven, but also brings the reader in, unveiling an underlying kindness and moral compass in Seventeen that most hard-edged action heroes are missing. The same issues that people had with Seventeen are present in Assassin Eighteen, namely our favorite assassin's ability to somehow avoid significant injury -- one scene involving leaping off a building, through a glass atrium, and into a shallow pool was particularly egregious, but there are others as well. But as I said in my review of Seventeen, if you’re going to be upset because the hero survives injuries that would cripple anyone else, you’re probably overthinking what this is supposed to be. Brownlow was a long-time screenwriter, and he still has a knack for crafting a well-plotted tale that he wraps up in a satisfying way. It's a fun romp that is a summer blockbuster in book form -- great for the beach or a mindless escape.