by Rob Hart ★★★★★
"When you enter this life, you don't expect to leave it clean. When I got into the program, I thought maybe there was a chance."
If you've ever read any assassin novels, or watched movies from the genre, they inevitably mention that the only way out of "the life" -- or 'the game", or whatever euphemism they choose to use to describe professionally killing people -- is in a body bag. Quitting and retiring peacefully simply isn't an option, and when they try to step away, something always pulls them back in and causes them to revert to their killing ways.
But let's imagine that they could get out. After killing people for years, could a professional simply stop killing and leave that part of them behind? When your normal is moving through the world with a god-like power over life and death, wouldn't that power be addictive? In Assassins Anonymous, author Rob Hart assumes the answer is yes, and he uses the construct of twelve-step programs to explore how a retired assassin might struggle to leave his past behind, especially when that past won't leave him alone.
Our main character is Mark, who is in "Assassins Anonymous" and has maintained his sobriety (by not killing anyone) for almost a year. At first, it feels like a joke. "Hi, I'm Mark, and I'm a killer" he says at his first meeting, to applause from the small group. This is tongue-in-cheek, right? But then...it isn't. We come to realize that we're dealing with a main character who truly wants to be better, who is committed to his recovery and living via the tenants of the program every day. "One year since the biggest mistake I ever made, if you're not counting all the others," he says early in the novel, and when we find out about that "biggest mistake", the reader understands why it caused him to finally hit rock bottom.
Mark has completed step eight ("we make a list of all persons we have harmed, and become willing to make amends to them all"), chronicling that list of people in a book he always carries with him, and he is on the verge of moving to step nine ("we make direct amends to such people (that we have harmed), whenever possible, except when to do so would injure them or others") when he is attacked after a meeting by an unknown assailant. After prolonged close combat, during which Mark has opportunities to kill his attacker but refrains, the fight ends when Mark is stabbed in the side. With Mark incapacitated, the assailant pats him down until he finds the book containing the list of people to whom Mark needs to make amends and takes it, nodding as if he got what he came for, before leaving Mark on the floor of the church.
Mark survives, as the assailant seemingly knew he would, and carefully makes his way back to his apartment, only to find it engulfed in flames. Suddenly he finds himself on the run, trying to uncover information about who is behind the attack and how they would even know about the recovery program or the book of amends. The information in the book is ciphered, but weakly so, and there is an immense amount of sensitive detail about his life as a killer that is now out of Mark's control. He's left trying to unravel it all and is forced to reconnect with parts of his former life while tamping down the desire for the power (and inevitable dead bodies at his hands) that comes with reconnecting to that part of his past.
It's a novel idea (pun intended) for a book, and Hart does an admirable job creating a character who is very much fighting an inner battle with himself throughout the entire story. Hart is faithful to both the genre -- there is all of the action-packed, cat-and-mouse globetrotting that you'd expect from any assassin novel -- and to twelve-step recovery programs. He develops a character who longs, at times, to tap into the power that comes with being "The Pale Horse" (Mark's handle, which inspires fearful respect from all who hear it) but is equally committed to his sobriety. Mark's at war with himself and truly struggles with that throughout, and it adds a unique humanity to a type of character that is so often portrayed as a soulless killing machine in the genre.
As a canvas against which our main character can work through that inner conflict, Hart crafts a plausible mystery around the reasons behind the attack and the ongoing pursuit of Mark. The reader is left rooting for Mark to find a way out of his predicament while also wondering if he can do so while remaining true to his sobriety. All of it combines to deliver a new take on a genre that doesn't see much variation, and it's all the more refreshing for it.
Assassin's Anonymous doesn't pack a particularly powerful literary punch, but that's not its raison d'être. It's fun, and not without a few memorable turns of phrase ("As soon as we stepped outside the airport, the humidity hugged me like that weird uncle you try to avoid: way too tight and in all the wrong places.") In addition to being entertaining, it's a much more faithful look at recovery programs than I was anticipating. All of that combines to bump this unexpectedly into a place among my 5-star reads for the year.
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