Billy Summers

Published in 2021, Billy Summers is a hitman who will only kill bad people—men he considers deserving of death. He is also a war veteran and a voracious reader who uses a cover identity as a dim-witted writer to blend into a target's neighborhood while he waits for the right moment to take the shot. The novel follows his final job, which goes wrong, and the aftermath.

The novel is unusually interested in craft and storytelling: Billy's cover involves writing an autobiography, and chapters of that autobiography appear within the novel. King uses the nested narrative to explore how people construct and protect their inner selves, and how trauma gets processed through story. Billy is also explicitly a reader—his tastes in fiction are a recurring element of his character.

Alice is a young woman Billy rescues after a traumatic assault and who becomes his unlikely companion in hiding. Her relationship with Billy is the novel's emotional center—he protects her while she, in different ways, challenges him. The dynamic is explicitly not romantic; King is interested in a different kind of bond, something closer to guardian and ward.

No. Billy Summers is a crime thriller with no supernatural elements—it is King in full crime fiction mode, comparable to The Colorado Kid or Joyland in its genre departure. Readers expecting horror will not find it here; readers who have avoided King due to horror content will find Billy Summers an accessible entry point.