The Ethical Assassin

October 17, 2005
Liss (A Conspiracy of Paper
) recycles familiar conventions—drug dealers, missing money, an innocent hero mixed up with bad guys—but salvages his novel from banality with a few quirky touches. In sticky south Florida of August 1985, Lem Altick, a 17-year-old door-to-door encyclopedia salesman, witnesses the murder of two potential customers in a mobile home. Fearing he'll be fingered for the crime—or worse, that he's next—Lem establishes a wary relationship with the likable killer, Melford Kean, who is either a violent psychopath or an animal rights vigilante fighting agribusiness. Lem must also watch out for Jim Doe, the corrupt, redneck police chief who saw Lem at the trailer on the night of the crimes. Lem's paranoia heightens when he learns of Doe's connection to his employers at the encyclopedia sales company, which turns out to be a front. While Lem repeatedly skitters away from danger as he gathers clues that reveal a web of corruption, he finds time to fall for fellow bookseller Chitra and to undergo a political awakening under Melford's tutelage. Liss provides enough entertainment to keep the pages turning, but this hybrid of a thriller and a coming-of-age story doesn't quite succeed as either.

November 15, 2005
Seventeen-year-old Lem Altick has a problem. While selling encyclopedias in a South Florida trailer park, he witnesses the killing of two of his potential customers. Unless he cooperates with the assassin, a vegan animal-rights activist with a series of lessons to impart, he risks being implicated in the crime. Sharp-witted Lem apparently still has much to learn, including why it's OK to kill certain people but never animals. Among the villains who complicate his life are the local police chief and a middle-aged meth overlord who -mentors - young boys. As events turn increasingly bizarre, Lem finds that it is only by looking at life from the assassin's skewed perspective that he can survive. Edgar Award -winning novelist Liss ("A Spectacle of Corruption") writes his first contemporary thriller, a twisted 1980s tale that mixes just the right touch of levity (characters include B.B. Gunn and Chuck Finn) with serious philosophical issues (e.g., should animals be used to test the lethality of drugs?). Readers will enjoy this wild and highly entertaining ride. For all popular fiction collections. [See Prepub Alert, "LJ "11/1/05.]" -Ronnie H. Terpening, Univ. of Arizona, Tucson"

Copyright 2005 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

December 1, 2005
Readers expecting another historical thriller from Liss in the manner of " A Conspiracy of Paper" (2000) and " The Coffee Trader" (2003) are in for quite a surprise. Moving from Arturo Perez-Reverte territory to the very different world of Carl Hiaasen, Liss delivers a contemporary ecoterrorist romp shot through with elements of the absurd. It begins with a 17-year-old Jewish encyclopedia salesman working door to door in a South Florida trailer park (Is the absurdist angle apparent yet?). Lem Altick is saving money for college by tricking poor people into buying supermarket encyclopedias, but he gets more than he bargained for when an assassin with "Warholishy" hair saunters into a trailer where Lem is about to close a deal and efficiently kills the two would-be encyclopedia readers and then engages Lem in a chat about his favorite Shakespeare play (Lem is partial to " Twelfth Night" ). It only gets weirder from there, as Lem finds himself a sort of comrade-in-arms with the ethical assassin, whose real purpose seems to be raising havoc with some distinctly unethical pig farmers. There's also a sicko small-town sheriff lurking in the wings, having apparently wandered into the action straight out of Jim Thompson's " Pop. 1280" . The jump from financial chicanery in seventeenth-century London to redneck craziness, South Florida style, seems daunting, but Liss sails across the abyss unscathed. Be careful to whom you recommend this: the Perez-Reverte crowd may not be amused, but Hiaasen's homeboys will feel right at home down in the muck with a gang of evildoing pig farmers. (Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2005, American Library Association.)