Billy Summers was written by Stephen King and published by Scribner in 2021. You can purchase the book on Amazon/Kindle and you can visit the author on Amazon.
Billy is a hired assassin and the best that money can by. With a decorated military background, as a snipper in the Iraq war, he comes with baggage but he also has a keen eye for a target. His only condition, before he pulls the trigger, is that whoever he sends into death, has to be truly a bad guy.
Billy Summers honors a contract on a man, that another man wants dead but he vows it to be his last hit. Everything is planned out perfectly, including his vanishing act after the job is done. Billy is also a master of disguises and he becomes these other people that he meticulously creates in order to stay safe from others who are ironically out to kill him. Billy becomes two other characters, one a writer and the other a computer geek in his quest to hide himself from the police and others who want him dead. During this time, living as someone else, he rescues a girl from a brutal assault and nurses her back to health. She in turn helps Billy and reluctantly the two team up as a duo to get the bad guys that did her wrong and to also go after the ones who turned on Billy, one of which is a truly evil man.
I am and always have been a Stephen King fan but this book, which is a very long read, started out slow and not very interesting ( Maybe at a 3 star rating ) and then at the halfway point- the master turned on the burners! It soon shot up to a solid 5 stars and stayed there until the final dramatic and compelling scene. I can't think of a better King story than The Stand, as far as labeling it a classic, but Billy Summers, I believe, is destined to become another King Classic.
I loved Billy's writer character in this one. King takes you on sort of a sub plot of how this other character that Billy creates loves to write and wants to be a writer but soon, the plots meld into one and King is at his excellent best here to bring you more into the story of Billy Summers.
This one has all the elements to make it great: It's about love and it's also about fate and after the read, Billy Summers the man and the book will remain in your hearts for a long time. I promise. A must read!
I give Billy Summers a solid 5 out of 5 stars.