At the end of the sixth (or seventh?) book on Russia, the USSR and the KGB, I needed to take a breath of literary fresh air. I dove into Billy Summers, a novel by Stephen King (whose birthday is today, happy birthday Stephen), published in France last year.
Smashed child
Billy Summers is not a horror or fantasy novel. We are in for a very good thriller. This isn’t the first time King has tried this style. The Different Seasons corpus includes two stories devoid of horror and fantasy: the redemption of Shawshank and a gifted student. Billy Summers is almost in this situation. There is a wink that we let you discover.
Billy Summers is a hitman, who became what he is due to circumstances beyond his control. Not that he particularly enjoys this role, but what else can you do when you only know how to kill? So he follows the path that seems to have been laid out for him.
Nevertheless, he wants to hang it up and the opportunity presents itself in the form of a golden contract. One last lap before spending peaceful and happy days. To become Mr. Everyman in a house in the suburbs, with a well-mowed lawn, charming neighbors, the weekend barbecue and a beer shared with a neighbor on the steps of the house.
Obviously, things are not going to happen that way. The sponsor of the last contract takes him for an idiot. Which Billy is not. An infernal, panting spiral begins and a grain of sand will get involved in the gears.
Survivor
This is not the first time that Stephen King has written about gender-based, sexual or domestic violence. A significant part of the story is devoted to Alice, our grain of sand, who illuminates the adventures of Billy Summers.
Alice has been attacked, and Billy accidentally saves her life. From victim, she goes to survivor and from survivor, she goes to executioner. Almost without qualms. After all, her attackers had no qualms about harming her, why would she?
Billy saves her and takes it upon himself to change his psychological identity, if you can put it that way. Alice is his redemption, a way to fix something he couldn’t do in his past. This is not explicitly stated in the book, it is implicit in each page.
A relationship develops between them which is not only friendly, but not entirely romantic. A kind of touching in-between, with a rather sad ending, but ultimately very logical, because there could be no happy ending.
A friend who wishes them well
In theory, a hitman works alone. In practice, Billy is flanked by Alice, but also by Bucky. He’s an intermediary, to put it simply. He and Billy have a rather interesting and almost undetectable way of communicating. If one day you need to deliver a message to someone, you can take inspiration from it.
Bucky must provide Billy with an address. He sends him a coded message on a disposable phone, directing him to a YouTube video of a band. The message is very simple, something like “I saw them in concert at such and such a place, they played a great 10 minute set”.
The process is reminiscent of dead letter boxes and it is very ingenious. Although social networks are very fond of comments to feed the algorithms, few people actually read the comments. Who would go through all the comments under a rock band’s video and then check that yes, this group played at a certain location and actually did a specific set that lasted 10 minutes? At worst, someone would write “no, that’s wrong, they never played at such and such a place” and the author might reply “you’re right, I confused it with something else, ha ha ha, that’s is the age, soon the retirement home! »
The technique is elegant because it is simple. It is reminiscent of the one used by Michael Scofield in Prison Break, who uses forums to leave messages. Except that a forum can be monitored and you often have to be logged in to access messages. Who has the means to monitor all the videos and comments on YouTube? Especially since the recipient simply needs to read the message, they do not need to respond.
The veterans issue
Billy had a shattered childhood as has been said and decided at 17 to join the army. He is very quickly deployed to Iraq and we discover part of the war throughout the pages. King does not directly address the issue of the treatment of American veterans, but we can sense it implicitly.
Already during the Vietnam era, no one really wanted to talk about veterans, this did not change in the 80s or the 2000s and we can assume that this is still not the case now. We send men and women to war, but we forget to get them out of the war that has taken root in their heads.
France is not necessarily doing better if we are to believe the various works of the National Assembly on this theme. However, with the war in Ukraine, we will have to seriously open this file. The specialists will jump in front of this line.
Obviously, we cannot compare the American army and the French army, which do not have the same characteristics, nor the same recruitment, nor the same theaters of operations. But the question remains the same: what to do with our soldiers afterwards?
Billy Summers is a success and we are impatiently awaiting the film adaptation, by JJ Abrams. We know in advance that he will respect the work of the master since we owe him the wonderful miniseries 22.11.63 (11.22.63 in English). We don’t yet have a release date, but while you wait to see it on screen, immerse yourself in this exquisitely crafted novel.
Billy Summers is available in physical and digital format and, to not miss any Stephen King news, you can consult the Stephen King France website and the Stephen King club.