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    People Die: A Novel
    Unavailable
    People Die: A Novel
    Unavailable
    People Die: A Novel
    Ebook223 pages4 hours

    People Die: A Novel

    By Kevin Wignall

    3.5/5

    ()

    Currently unavailable

    Currently unavailable

    About this ebook

    JJ is a model employee. He does his work quietly and competently, and he keeps his nose clean. But JJ's job is murder for hire, and when the kind of company he works for undergoes restructuring, people don't get fired -- they get fired upon. So for the first time in his life, JJ is not just a predator; he's the prey, and he doesn't even know why. All he knows is that the people close to him are being killed, former allies are turning against him, and the only person offering help is the best friend of one of his victims.
    It's one of the golden rules -- never become involved with a target's friends or family, with the people who loved him. But JJ's running out of options, and, despite himself, he's drawn by the lure of passing through that door, from his side of death to theirs.
    Much more than a straightforward hitman caper, People Die is a rare debut, combining tongue-in-cheek sensibility with heart-in-mouth suspense to provide killer entertainment.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherSimon & Schuster
    Release dateApr 3, 2002
    ISBN9780743241885
    Unavailable
    People Die: A Novel
    Author

    Kevin Wignall

    Kevin Wignall is a British writer, born in Brussels in 1967. He spent many years as an army child in different parts of Europe and went on to study politics and international relations at Lancaster University. He became a full-time writer after the publication of his first book, People Die (2001). His other novels are Among the Dead (2002); Who is Conrad Hirst? (2007), shortlisted for the Edgar Award and the Barry Award; Dark Flag (2010); The Hunter’s Prayer (2015, originally titled For the Dogs in the USA), which was made into a film directed by Jonathan Mostow and starring Sam Worthington and Odeya Rush; A Death in Sweden (2016); The Traitor’s Story (2016); and A Fragile Thing (2017); and To Die in Vienna (2018).

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    Reviews for People Die

    3.5/5

    30 ratings2 reviews

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    • 5/5
      As one who avoids the thriller genre in general, I surprised myself by being curious about one, curious enough to place a hold for it at my local library. It might have been something I read about the author, Kevin Wignall. Born in Belgium, family lived in Ireland and Germany before settling in W. England where Wignall lives today. Another factor is I've devoted this reading year to a goal of reading as many unknown-to-me authors as possible.That aside, People Die is the most lyrical novel about killing that I've ever read. I lost track of the body count but when reading a story about a contract assassin who suddenly finds himself the object of the hunt instead of the confident hunter, what can a reader expect? William "JJ" Hoffman is no ordinary assassin. Instead, due to Wignall's prose and characterization, we see the human being rather than the monster we normally would expect to see in a person who earns his living ending other people's lives.Wignall constantly shows us beauty even in violent death and weaves the threads of character into a philosophical and introspective man who is fully cognizant that he is damaged goods. In fact, the book is an exploration of the psyche of a killer without motive who yearns for and questions if there is redemption for him, a future of "normalcy" where he can fit in and be received among ordinary people who will not detect the stench of blood on him and who will not recoil from his company.The pace of the book is uniquely tied to the action -- fast, taught, minimalist during kills; slowed, contemplative, poetic afterward. The plot is complex and nested, layer upon layer with no real resolution to all the motivations, so that we understand that the ambiguity in life that we all know is magnified for the hired killer. How can such a person ever get his feet on the ground? The moral question in the novel -- ambiguously "resolved" -- is the Big One: Can good ever come out of evil? Can just ends evolve from foul means? People Die appears light on the surface but is weighted underneath, and leaves the reader who lives complacently by his/her own simple rules of right and wrong upside down in a moral stew yet with hope for a killer who fails to be heartless.
    • 3/5
      This isn't the type of novel I would normally read, apart from a connection to my favourite film, Grosse Pointe Blank, which is about a hitman. Random, but here I am! JJ Hoffman, another loner hired gun with a heart, is similar to John Cusack's character, so I was happy. The plot is full of the usual macho clichés, including Russian mobsters and beautiful young women, plus a vague subplot about historical religious artefacts, but I liked JJ enough not to care - and bonus points for not making him 'see the light' and give up his violent vocation after meeting the family of a past 'hit'. He randomly tells a former girlfriend the truth about what he does, and has thinky thoughts about finding 'balance' in his life, but then still goes out and whacks anyone who crosses him. Not sure if there's a sequel, but I definitely want to read more about JJ!