Assassins Anonymous

May 1, 2024
A former assassin fights to remain retired. Mark is good at killing. After honing his skills as a Navy SEAL, he became an infamous hitman known as the Pale Horse, taking freelance gigs while also working for a clandestine deep-state organization dubbed the Agency. Then, last Christmas, something happened that caused him to quit cold turkey. Thanks to Assassins Anonymous, a support group designed to help people like him transition into a new way of life, Mark is just days away from receiving his one-year chip when a Mohawk-sporting Russian with prison tattoos jumps him, stabs him in the side, and flees. Mark manages to make it from the Lower East Side to the Bowery, where a black-market trauma surgeon named Astrid patches him up, but when he returns to his West Village apartment to retrieve the cash to pay her, he finds the place in flames. He ducks into his favorite local haunt to collect himself, only for the bartender to pass him a note from his Russian attacker that reads simply: SHE'S PRETTY. With Astrid now in danger, Mark has no choice but to bring her along on his desperate quest to uncover who wants him dead and why. Despite Mark's insistence that "being an assassin is nothing like John Wick," Hart's latest wears its myriad cinematic influences on its sleeve. Escalating stakes and precisely choreographed action sequences keep the pages turning, but a slew of increasingly gonzo twists skew the tone toward camp--a vibe underscored by Mark's droll yet angsty first-person-present narration. Though Hart often mistakes quirk for character development, the scenes Mark shares with his fellow recovering murder addicts impart some nice emotional resonance, helping to ground the tale and lend it heft. Bombastic whiz-bang fun.

COPYRIGHT(2024) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

May 15, 2024
Mark, the best hitman in the world, wants to turn his life around. He's joined a 12-step program for killers, and he's been doing pretty well. When he's attacked after a meeting and nearly killed, Mark is torn. Does he try to continue his journey of self-improvement, or does he polish up the old skills and go on the hunt again? Hart's latest is very much in the vein of The Warehouse (2019) and The Paradox Hotel (2022). Its premise suggests that it's not meant to be taken entirely seriously, but it's definitely not a comedy. If one accepts that a 12-step program for killers actually exists, then everything else in the book follows along quite reasonably. Narrator Mark is an interesting chap. Readers will believe that he has mad skills as a killer and that he is sincere when he says he wants to be a better person, but there's a sense that there's something he's not telling us, some secrets he's debating whether to divulge. Hart continues to entertain and thrill.

COPYRIGHT(2024) Booklist, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

Starred review from May 13, 2024
A legendary assassin joins a support group of murderers hoping to cure themselves of their addiction to violence in Hart’s nail-biting latest (after The Paradox Hotel). Mark, who works under the moniker the Pale Horse, has kept his murderous impulses in check for months, but his progress is threatened when he’s attacked after a meeting of Assassins Anonymous. His Russian assailant stabs him in the chest before stealing a notebook with the names of everyone Mark plans to atone to. With the help of his former medic, Astrid, Mark recovers from his injuries. When his apartment is blown up a few days later, Astrid joins him on the run, and the pair head to Singapore, where Mark hopes to track down an old contact and ferret out whether his ex-employers in U.S. intelligence are out to get him, or if someone connected to a former target has come for revenge. Mark’s continued efforts to stay “clean” from violence provide welcome humor to the otherwise breakneck proceedings. Strong characters and rattling suspense lift things further above par. Hart remains a formidable rising talent. Agent: Josh Getzler, HG Literary.