Liss,
David. The Ethical Assassin. Ballantine. March 2006. c.336p.
ISBN 1-4000-6421-X. $24.95. Fiction.
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.