The Killing Kind

Michael Hendricks has a very particular set of skills, skills he has learned over a short career as a covert ops agent stationed in Afghanistan, skills that make him a nightmare for other hired killers. If you pay him now, that will be the end of it. You will survive an attempt on your life. But if you don’t, he will ignore you, they will find you, and they will kill you.

Up to now, Hendricks has made himself a very successful career knocking off other hit men. Unfortunately for Hendricks, a large crime syndicate dubbed The Council has taken it upon itself to seek out an equally skilled killer, Engelmann, to wipe him off the map. Adding fuel to the fire is FBI Special Agent Charlie Thompson. Leaving nothing behind; no clues, no method of identification, Hendricks has become nothing more than a ghost to her for years.

The Killing Kind sets a collision course for all three individuals. A collision course that leads to a war. A war in which all three will do anything to be the last one standing.

Chris Holm’s The Killing Kind moves like a tank with a Ferrari engine; absolutely brutal and destructive scenes infused with action that flows effortlessly. With so many cooks in the kitchen, you rarely have time to catch your breath before Holm moves the focus to another scene or character, keeping things fresh and intriguing.

The Killing Kind had been one of my most anticipated reads of 2015 and I’m happy to say that my expectations were met, and then some. Grab this when it hits shelves in September.

Wonderful thriller where our hero is a serial hit man who only targets other hit men who work for organized crime.. A former black ops special forces soldier who was one of the best of the best before an IED took out all but one member of his team and whom the US government thought was dead. Now he and that remaining team member have developed a lucrative business hitting hit men before they could eliminate their targets but now he was the target. A very suspenseful story that will hook you from beginning to end.

Again, this excellent author offers us a novel that you will not let go!

The plus with Holm: his books covers are always beautiful, whether in a retro style like in his trilogy The Collector or this one, very James Bond-esque. Personally, it's silly I know but a nice cover weights a lot in my reading choices.

And with Holm the story is always as good as the cover. Fourth book read by this author and I am never disappointed. Holm is right in line with authors of noir fiction with, always, this humor of his he perfectly gauged at the right time.

Chris Holm also has the knack to make completely hateful character in every respect, super friendly. Because let's be honest, a hitman who becomes the target of another hitman, one would have a slight urge to tell him, "serves you right mate, you just had to choose another career" But ultimately, well, we tend to find Hendricks qualities that make him the guy we would like to have as buddy.

The author draws up in few words the portraits of quite all the characters involved, both good and bad, and makes a very realistic picture of the protagonists. And in The Killing Kind, there is no shortage of protagonists! In the pure style "the hunted hunter", Hendricks tracks different hitmen themselves hunted by a hitman to flush Hendricks... that's a lot of hunters! It would be enough to lose tracks of the story (pun intended!) but the quality of writing, the rhythm that does not fail and the sharp wit make this book a delight.

And at one point, I shouted "NOOO" then "Phew !!" and ending with "Oh no...." Because Holm's like that, he plays with your nerves. And the best? We want more!

In a nutshell

I'm sold, I love the writing of this author that never let you down. It is a 4.5 / 5 for me.

(Originally posted at http://vanessa-s-bookshelves.blogspot...)

I am a huge fan of Chris Holm, and this book absolutely cements that. I think it's easily his best book yet, and also easily his darkest and most suspenseful.

I love Michael Hendricks, who is sort of a moral person in an incredibly immoral profession. Yes, he kills people and yes, he does it for money (and actually essentially extorts it from people who are going to be killed from others) but still. Still. He kills horrible people and he saves...okay, he saves slightly less horrible people. And he's in love but he walked away from her to keep her safe and also because he didn't deserve her (see the fact that he kills people for money).

The tension is high throughout but I absolutely dare you to walk away and do something else during the last few chapters. (And if we're being honest, I really mean during the last 100 or so pages.) This book, guys---you need it.

(There's going to be a sequel, right?)

Highly recommended.

4 Stars! Wow, a killer who kills killers who are being paid to kill bad people. This one had me intrigued from the blurb and interested from chapter one. There is a lot of gory violence in this one, so if that bothers you, you may want to rethink buying this book. But if not, then you will be caught up in the suspense like I was. I mean people are being killed left and right. This English dude doesn't care who he kills. And this Corporation that these two killers work for? Something seriously wrong is going on there. I don't know if there's a rebel involved inside there or what, but to pit two members against each other, one unknowingly. That's just wrong.

This book definitely kept my attention and was definitely a page turner for me. Before I knew, I was done with this one. The ending was like SOOOOO good. That poor house though. I really did like Michael though. Even though he was a hit man, he did have a conscience. I mean he was all worried about the hit on the 16 year old boy until he met him. I don't doubt his decision on that one at all. He made the right one. I definitely recommend this book!

Thanks Mulholland Books and Net Galley for providing me with this free e-galley in exchange for an honest review.

THE KILLING KIND Chris Holm Mulholland Books ISBN 978-0-316-25953-8 Hardcover Thriller

You may not be familiar with Chris Holm, but you will be soon. Holm is the author of a somewhat off-the-radar semi-supernatural trilogy known as the The Collector Series and which garnered a great deal of acclaim from far-flung and varied corners. Holm’s new novel, THE KILLING KIND, takes him in a somewhat different direction. It’s a crime thriller novel with a surprisingly sympathetic protagonist and a startlingly original premise which moves along so smoothly and quickly that you almost forget that you are reading.

Holm sets up a great scenario in THE KILLING KIND that gets things moving ever forward throughout the book. Michael Hendricks is a hitman. What he does is kill other hitmen. He finds out when a hit is scheduled, goes to the selected target, and offers, in effect, to save the targets life, for money of course. Actually, he charges quite handsomely for this service. Hendricks is pretty much a “my way or the highway” kind of guy, and since most of the targets he contacts are not exactly model citizens he has no problem walking away if his potential client doesn’t want to pay his fee. What we learn fairly quickly about Hendricks, however, is that for a stone-cold killer he’s not a bad guy at all. It is a measure of Holm’s talent that he is able to believably construct this type of character. Part of the bricks-and-mortar of that is that Hendricks is doing what he does for a good and somewhat bittersweet reason, which I’ll let you discover when you read THE KILLING KIND. Hendricks, for his part, is an all but invisible assassin, formerly part of a black-ops team which was all but wiped out. Hendricks has the best of all possible covers: he is thought to be dead by all but one person, and his former employer all but denies his existence to begin with. There are two problems, however. One is an FBI agent who has noticed a pattern of hit men being killed and thinks that someone --- a ghost off of the radar --- is responsible. She’s right of course, and in THE KILLING KIND finds that she is on the verge of the case that may make her career. The other problem would be the guys who hire the guys who Hendricks keeps killing. They want it stopped, and turn to a killer named Engelmann who is as bloodthirsty as he is brilliant. Unlike Hendricks, Engelmann really likes killing, and he has figured out a way to identify him and take him down. The result is a pursuit that takes both men at crosspaths across Missouri and into Virginia for an explosive confrontation from which only one of them can come emerge alive. Maybe.

I thought, as the pages of THE KILLING KIND quickly dwindled away, that the ending was either going to seem rushed or be one of those “to be continued” conclusions. I was wrong on both counts. Holm’s pacing in THE KILLING KIND is pretty near perfect, start to finish, beginning to end. Further, THE KILLING KIND is complete in itself. Holm leaves himself some wiggle room for a potential sequel or even a series, but he could also have those characters who make it to the end of the book simply walk off of the page and into the sunset. I’d like to see more and my guess is that you will as well. Recommended.

Reviewed by Joe Hartlaub
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