BILLY SUMMERS by Stephen King: A Review

Sep 30

Sep 30 BILLY SUMMERS by Stephen King: A Review

A few years ago we went to see Tony Bennett at the Hollywood Bowl.

Bennett, age 93 at the time, sang several of his hits…several times. He introduced his band…several times. And while that magnificent voice wasn’t as strong and as steady as it once was, it sounded strong and steady enough.

Okay, so it wasn’t primo Tony Bennett -- it was still Tony Fncking Bennett!

Which brings us to Stephen King’s 2021 novel Billy Summers.

It ain’t primo Big Steve King, but it’s still Big Steve King.

And it’s the first one of his books I enjoyed all the way through since…gawd…Misery.

It’s been a long dry spell, Steverino.

. . .

Backstory first, then on to the meat of the matter:
I was a fan of King’s w-a-a-a-y back in his Cavalierdays when he cranked out short stories for one of the bargain basement Playboy knockoffs (I didn’t buy Cavalier for their dirty photos of nekkid ladies, I bought it for their dirty comics by the late great Vaughn Bode’).

Carrie wowed me.
‘Salem’s Lot felt like a good old fashion pulp horror novel.
The Shining ranks as his best work.
Night Shift offers a good introduction to some of his best early short fiction.
The Stand ran a little too long, a little too disjointed, but I enjoyed it.
The Dead Zone was another masterpiece.
Firestarter? Cujo? They can’t all be winners.
Danse Macabre is a fine example of King’s critical writing.
Different Seasons proved nothing short of brilliant.
Christine got me to blink.
Pet Semetary ended one sentence before it should have begun.
Skeleton Crew offered good midlist King short stories.
It? Seriously?
Misery showed him back in rare form, one of his very best.
The Tommyknockers? The Dark Half? Okay, I guess…
Four Past Midnight? Two adequate stories and two major disappointments, and disappointments because “The Langoliers” and “The Library Police” both start out oh, so strong then King gives up and lapses into his favorite hackneyed trope: The ol’ booga-booga.
Needful Things…?

Up until that point I’d been buying every Stephen King novel as soon as it came out in hardcover (The Dark Tower series excepted because I didn’t feel like starting a series until it was wrapped up, and the Bachman books because I waited until they came out in an omnibus edition).

But when I bought Needful Things I managed to make it halfway through, stuck a book marker in the middle, and didn’t take it down off the shelf to finish it until later.

Ten years later,
to be exact.

Now I enjoyed Gerald’s Game (even though it read like a variant of Misery), but not enough to get me back on track reading everything King wrote.

On Writing is not the best book on the art & craft of writing but is a good book on the art & craft of writing (and it’s short!) and it offers some of King’s personal insights into his career and works and to be perfectly honest, it’s worth reading for the poison ivy story alone.

From A Buick 8 sounded like just the sort of story that’s right up my alley and it would have been…

…if he kept it down to 3,000 words or so.

Lisey’s Story offered a premise that caught my interest, then collapsed into Just Another Long Stephen King Booga-Booga Novel.

(I didn’t read “Head Down” in Nightmares & Dreamscapes until many years after it was published and while the rest of the book is adequate-to-good Stephen King, holy shamolley this essay on his son’s Little League is one of the finest things he ever wrote and is highly recommended.)

So I am like really really gunshy about new Stephen King books although I still enjoy most of his earlier work.

. . .

As noted above, Christine marked the moment I first began have specific problems with King’s style.

He tells you what he’s going to tell you, he tells you, then he tells you what he just told you.

That’s great if you’re on the radio.

It grows tiresome in print.

One of these days I’m going to try an experiment:
I’ll buy a King novel I haven’t read, tear out every other chapter, X out every even number page, highlight the first sentence of every remaining paragraph, and see if it results in a readable short story.

I’m betting it will.

When it comes to characterization and dialog and descriptive passages, King is an undisputed master.

But gawd! He d-r-a-a-a-g-s it out…

So I began Billy Summers with great trepidation.

. . .

First the really good news:
It kept my interest from beginning to end and while I have some issues with some specifics, Big Steve did not let us down.

Bravo!

The not bad but less than enthusiastic news:
There are weak spots and problems, but not enough to spoil enjoyment.

Premise: Billy Summers is a hit man hired to kill a prisoner on his way to the court house. Since said prisoner is fighting extradition, Billy needs to be in place for several weeks, ready to do the job on short notice. The guys who hire Billy think he’s dependable but somewhat dim (he’s not; on the contrary he’s smart enough never to show the folks he works with just how smart he really is).

Clever twist: The guys who hire Billy come up with a cover story for him, that he’s a writer working on a book in an office that overlooks the courthouse where he’s going to shoot the prisoner.

Irony: Billy, being much more brilliant than they realize, actually starts writing a book, a thinly disguised autobiographical novel about his hellish childhood and his career as a Marine sniper.

The best part of the book is the first half (more like the first 40%) where Billy goes undercover, befriends the people he’s living and working beside, but slowly realizes there’s much, much more to this assassination than what’s been presented to him.

So far,
so good.

After Billy scores his hit (just under the halfway mark) he goes to ground to wait out the massive police search for the sniper and other hit men who’ve been sent to make sure he never talks.

It is here he meets a Damsel-In-Distress…but more on that in a bit.
A little past the two-thirds mark they go on the move to find the real reason why Billy was hired…and why the guys doing the hiring want him dead now.

Last third offers some bang-bang-shoot-em-up-one-two-three, then a logical denouement.

Compared to the massive disappointments I found in far too many of King’s other books, Billy Summers fills the bill quite nicely and I recommend it as a good summer beach read.

Along with The Shining, Misery, The Dark Half, and Lisey’s Story, it focuses on a writer struggling to get a work completed. King used this concept many times and each time he seems to add some new insight on the challenge and calling of writing.

But…(and you knew that was coming, didn’t you?)…without revealing any spoilers, there are some issues I have with the book, issues that keep it down in the Good Read, not Brilliant! bin.

. . .

Not going to start with the somewhat fanciful gangsters hiring Billy. They’re fine for melodramatic fiction, very sharply written and defined.

They place the novel solidly in the thriller genre, and I can easily imagine this part of the book being a 1960s Fawcett paperback original with a Robert McGinnis cover.

The writing in this part of the book is superb, and those seeking to sharpen their own craft can look upon the works of the mighty and despair. Character / dialog / setting are not just expertly done but brilliantly done.

One reason this part is so enjoyable is that while King still falls back on his tell ‘em what you’re gonna tell ‘em /tell ‘em / tell ‘em what ya told ‘em tricks, they work in the context of the story because…

The guys who hired him think Billy can’t remember stuff so they frequently repeat their instructions
Billy analyzes what they say and do in his mind, trying to figure out what their real game is
Billy -- writing a novel as part of his cover -- reinterprets his experience on the page

You barely notice King sneaking this one past you.

Bravo,
again.

The problem is this part of the novel doesn’t mesh up with the Damsel-In-Distress part.

Years ago I read something King wrote (in On Writing? Perhaps…) about his trick for breaking a story log jam (come to think of it, it may have been in his intro to the Bachman books): Turn the story into a stage play.
And that’s what happens when the D-I-D arrives.

They talk in Billy’s hideout for several days until Billy decides it’s safe to move.

Now, to his credit King breaks this up by interspacing pages from the novel Billy keeps writing (now for his own compulsory reasons, not as cover), and those pages include a lot of very well written Gulf War action (King’s research is superb, and if he’s bullshitting it’s brilliant bullshitting that passes the smell test and comes out like roses).

But the main story itself pretty much comes to a screeching halt, and without the distraction of the war scenes, would be pretty slow moving and talky.

And here’s the problem: It really doesn’t fit with the well written opening King gave us.

They’re not just two different stories, they’re two different kinds of stories.

The middle portion of Billy Summers would work fine as a stage play with a guy on the lam forced to take in a D-I-D for fear if he didn’t then he would be exposed.

But for that story to work, everything that lead up to the killer hiding needs to be gradually revealed bit by bit.

You can’t show all that then reiterate it.

It spoils the suspense, the tension…

The frisson.

Again, this is not bad, but it’s not primo.

I’m reminded of Robert Armstrong dragging Fay Wray along to meet King Kong just because every movie needs a romantic interest.

Which is another issue we need to discuss. Without spoiling anything or getting too explicit, the D-I-D has gone through a pretty traumatic experience.

She bounces back too quick.

I’m sure among the literally millions of women who suffered similar there are many who recovered physically and emotionally very, very quickly but this just doesn’t ring true in Billy Summers.

In a stage play? Where artifice and theatricality are not just accepted but celebrated?

Yeah, maybe you could get away with it there…

Maybe.

Once Billy and the D-I-D are on the move, the story quickly morphs into Stephen King’s Travis McGee fan fic.

McGee was a modern day knight errant, a “salvage expert” operating out of a houseboat called the Busted Flush in Florida, encountering D-I-Ds at every turn and helping them recover vast missing fortunes for 50% of the recovered funds.

(Some knight errant.)

The Travis McGee stories are good fun, written by John D. MacDonald to be both fast paced and fulla philosophizin’. Lots of people love them and Stephen King clearly does because in this part of the book Billy is clearly McGee, Bucky (his only friend) is McGee’s brilliant good buddy Meyer, and the D-I-D is the D-I-D.

(And don’t tell me King didn’t do this consciously, not when he writes “the girl, the gold watch, and everything” into a line of dialog clearly referencing one of MacDonald’s novels by that very title.)

Also in this portion we learn Bucky’s hideout is not far from where the haunted Overlook Hotel burned down and there are a couple of scenes where Billy encounters possible sinister supernatural forces and I was thinking if King dragged in some booga-booga I was going to get so %#@&ING MAD!!! but fortunately he’s just having some fun with us and doesn’t go down that path.

Good call,
Steverino.

Billy keeps working on his novel even though he has no clear reason to do so other than self-satisfaction, and finally it’s time to confront the bad guys and find out Who Is Behind All This and engage in the aforementioned bang-bang-shoot-em-up.

Okay, this is where the book hits its biggest credulity problems.

The action staging is adequate, not great but certainly far from bad.

The bad guys’ reactions to Billy’s justifiable demands to know what the hell is going on?

Not very plausible, nor consistent with what was established earlier.

There is no honor among thieves and even less among goombata.

Also: Several key characters pop up or are referenced when there has been no mention of them prior to this point.

That’s a cheat.

Especially regarding the master villain.

There are two action pieces at the end, one to find out who is responsible for the contract on Billy, the last to deal with that person.

That villain in this sort of story needs to be a presence much earlier, even if only by mention.

They’re too important to spring on us in the last 100 pages of the book.

Some foreshadowing is required.

(And while they are a roman a clef, that doesn’t excuse springing them on us unannounced.)

As Elmore Leonard observed in his novel Get Shorty, endings are hard.

I think by the time King reached the last 100 pages of Billy Summers he just sought to pack it in as fast as possible.

I’m grateful he avoided booga-booga.

Finally, while Quentin Tarantino certainly made packing pop references into modern fiction hip. King mined that vein long ago. He does it a lot here, too, and in a manner I found distracting.

Billy the literary genius Marine sharpshooter does not seem to be the sort who would give a rat’s patoot for movies and TV shows, especially movies and TV shows about the sort of stuff he’s been involved in.

I absolutely believe he’s an Émile Zola fan…and I absolute believes he finds some modicum of amusement in the Archie comics he carries around for cover in order to fool those he kills for that he’s ot-nay oo-tay ihjt-bray.

But I can’t see him as the sort to be interested in television at all, especially not modern pop culture.

I think King missed a bet by not showing him from the beginning as a hater of TV in general and one type in particular because that could have laid track to the ultimate boss; the idea occurs to King far too late in the story and seems roughly shoehorned it.

I also think his choice of “The Teddy-Bears’ Picnic” as the song sung by his Marines rings false.

That’s a British favorite (or should I say favourite?), not an American one.

The song is sung in Robert Aldrich’s 1970 WWII film Too Late The Hero by a somewhat daft Scottish commando as his unit moves out on patrol into the Japanese held jungle. Did King consciously or subconsciously lift this idea from that movie or is it just coincidence?

(Personally I think Kubrick caught the USMC’s tone perfectly seventeen years later in Full Metal Jacket when his Marines patrol the blitzed ruins of Huè while singing “The Mickey Mouse March” but knowing the House of Mouse, getting the rights to that probably proved impo$$ible.)