It’s fitting that this darkly funny novel of criminals hunting criminals is dropping in the middle of the Great Resignation, a time when burnout–among other factors–is prompting many workers to give their notice or just walk out the door. In Love and Bullets, the central characters have been ground down by years of being on the giving and receiving end of violence, and by staying on the run to dodge an ever-growing list of enemies. Consequently, they’re looking for a way out. But is it ever really possible to escape the outlaw life and its consequences? And what might a non-criminal future look like, assuming you live long enough to see it?
These questions seem to be constantly haunting the characters at the heart of the novel: Fiona, a hired assassin; her boyfriend, Bill, a skilled rip-off artist; and another (unnamed) hired assassin I’ll call the Killer. Something else they have in common: They all get added to the enemies list of their former (or soon-to-be-former) boss, the Dean, who runs a New York City-based crime organization, the Rockaway Mob. Bill becomes the first to make this list after he steals $3 million from the Mob, hoping it will “buy him liberation so complete, it would eliminate every concern from his mind, forever.” But, of course, freedom doesn’t come this easily, and neither does the money; the Dean retrieves it after having the man who’d planned to launder it for Bill killed. Now, he wants Bill’s head, too–literally.
The Dean assigns the Killer, the money launderer’s assassin, the hit job on Bill, and the Killer manages to track Bill to Oklahoma and slip a sedative into his drink at a local bar: the first step, he imagines, to doing away with him. But before the Killer can make his next move, he gets into an altercation with the bar’s staff that spurs him to leave the establishment, concerned that he’ll draw the attention of the police. As it turns out, though, law enforcement is a bigger problem than he’d imagined–for Bill, especially. The bartender and bouncer happen to be in cahoots with their father, the local sheriff, who’s made it his business to seize civilians’ assets, sometimes for “offenses” as minor as a broken taillight. Bill’s expensive watch paints a target on his back, and he becomes the trio’s next victim. Doing their father’s bidding, the bartender and bouncer string Bill up over a wreckage pit at a local junkyard and pressure him to turn over more money, having already confiscated a store of cash from his trunk. “We bet you got more where that came from,” the bartender tells Bill. “You give it up, we’ll let you go.”
But Bill suspects he’ll be killed either way, and things aren’t looking good for him–until Fiona arrives on the scene. As it happens, the Dean had also hired her to assassinate Bill, seemingly as a kind of backup plan. But in a double-cross against the Dean, Fiona sets Bill free. (This is just one of several instances in which Love and Bullets takes an unexpected, intriguing, or hilarious turn, and twists like these make the novel an enjoyable ride.)
Yet Bill and Fiona are far from out of danger. For one thing, the Killer is tracking them now, and he seems to be ready to unleash a drone-based weapon on them. For another, the sheriff arrives on the scene, and with a crew of thugs he manages to haul the couple off to his ranch.
But things take a dramatic turn for the Killer after he shoots down two of the thugs and discovers an Elvis costume in the back of their truck. He imagines that the costume would allow the wearer to take on Elvis’s persona: “strong and confident and ready to hump the world.” And when he dons the costume, this is just what happens: The Killer seems to have been overtaken by the King. This proves to be a turning point for him, and for his relationship with the Dean. When the Dean calls the Killer and asks for an update on Bill, the Killer poses this question:
“What?” For the first time ever, the Dean sounded on the verge of underpants-soiling terror. “Elvis?”
“‘Playing for Keeps,’ that’s mine,” I said. “I don’t even know what I’m doing, but the power of the King is guiding me through.”
The Dean seems to interpret this as a middle finger thrust to his face, and he vows to hunt down the Killer, just as he’s hunting down Bill, and now also Fiona. But in the context of the larger story, the Killer’s Elvis persona has greater powers. First of all, it’s just really funny (as are so many other elements of this book). Second, at times, it prompts moments of reflection that feel relevant not just to the Killer but also to the story of Fiona and Bill, and their relationship.
As one example, after hanging up on the Dean, the Killer (who still longs for his ex-wife) makes this observation about love:
Eventually, things at the sheriff’s ranch take an explosive turn, to the benefit of Fiona and Bill, who get an assist from the Killer. Although he and the couple never really form a lasting alliance, they all come to share a dangerous mission: to take out the Dean before he can get to them.
Fiona and Bill’s cat-and-mouse game with the Dean and his co-conspirators–as well as efforts to enrich themselves–take them first to Nicaragua and then back to New York City: more specifically, to Queens, the headquarters of the Rockaway Mob and the home of the Dean. All the way, they find inventive ways to break out of dangerous situations and to annihilate anyone who tries to get in their way. (In parallel to them, the Killer has a harrowing adventure of his own as he makes his way from Oklahoma to New York.) I can’t think of any writer who crafts action sequences better than Kolakowski, and the ones in this novel and in earlier works I reviewed (Boise Longpig Hunting Club and Rattlesnake Rodeo) truly had me on the edge of my seat. This action culminates in a tension-filled showdown with the Dean, in which Fiona’s father, a former black-operations soldier, joins in on the action.
But in addition to delivering compelling story lines and thrills, Love and Bullets explores, with insight, what’s wearing the characters down–mainly, the cumulative effects of engaging in criminal activity, and especially violence, for so long. A big reason Bill ripped off the Dean was a warning from a man who was once a con artist just like Bill, and who told Bill that he himself would be conned in the end: “[T]here’s no big score at the end of it all.” Shortly after delivering this warning, the man killed himself.
Near the end of Love and Bullets, even Fiona, perhaps the toughest character in the novel, has had her fill of violence, and of trying to stay alive. “I’m done with this shit,” she tells Bill, as they flee yet another dangerous situation. “We need out of this life.” The Killer also wants to put his blood-shedding days behind him.
But is such an escape really possible? The novel doesn’t provide definitive answers to this question, nor should it. The life courses that Fiona, Bill, and the Killer have chosen seem to suggest that they may never be completely out of danger. Furthermore, they may never be free of the temptation to swindle or steal. Even so, the novel’s ending–a satisfying one, at that–suggests that the characters have, at the very least, the powers to imagine a different kind of future. The duration of that future remains to be seen.
Would My Pick be Your Pick?
If you're interested in ________, the answer may be "Yes":￭ Thrillers with a cat-and-mouse angle
￭ Stories about organized crime
￭ Black comedy
