Let King Snipe Your Mind

STEPHEN KING — BILLY SUMMERS — 2021

You will of course recognize some of the references to or recollections of other works by Stephen King. The most important one is probably The Shining since in the mountain-refuge the story comes to Bill and Alice can go on a short walk and come to a bluff overlooking a valley and on the other side they can see the place where The Overlook hotel used to be, a hotel that burned down to the ground in the old novel, or at least we can assume it did, and a painting of some the hedge or garden animals carved in some evergreens are represented in that refuge, in the outer summer-lodge, as a framed picture, and this painting seems of course haunted with a lion that seems to be advancing. That’s the only surreal or supernatural element in this novel that is, in fact, a story that wants to be extremely realistic.

The second element is the fact that Billy Summers is a veteran of the war in Iraq where he was a sniper. And this veteran is cast into the character of a writer in order to be, in due time, the shooter who will kill some other hitman for a serious amount of money. The novel here contains a detailed description of his mission or missions in Iraq and what came afterward, how he became a hitman for some criminals. He pretends he only shoots bad people, but that does not change the fact he is a hitman and as such has no…