William Lashner does two things very well: He writes a fast-paced, thrilling, pounding mystery tale, and he always opens his books with a stunner of a set piece. In MARKED MAN, somewhat amoral lawyer Victor Carl woke up with a mysterious unknown tattoo on his body.

Now, in the new A KILLER’S KISS, Carl is just about to reinitiate physical contact with his long-lost love whom he has never forgotten, when suddenly, two hard-boiled cops burst into his apartment to tell him that the woman’s husband has been murdered. And of course, their suspicions are as aroused as Carl was just a moment ago.

The novel revolves around a “what might have been” theme, the conceit that there is always one great love in one’s life, and often, you don’t end up with him or her. What might the world have been like if you could have connected, or if you get a second chance to do so years later? Carl’s one lost love was Julia, an enigmatic and apparently overly self-involved minx who broke his heart in two and then shacked up with a urologist. When she calls him out of the blue, it awakens a lot of old resentment, but especially the old feelings that she was the one for him.

But this is a mystery novel and not a romance. So once Julia’s husband has been murdered, and either Julia or Victor become the chief suspects, things start happening. The husband’s shady financial past is explored, and Victor becomes embroiled in a violent world of drugs and Eastern European crime lords, all the while trying to determine whether it’s possible he could have a future with his long-lost paramour. Or is he scheduled to be rejected again?

Surprisingly, the plot here is fairly believable, an investment theft scheme that goes badly awry, leaving the wrong people holding the bag. But as in Lashner’s other Victor Carl books, there are some characters that are just so over-the-top as to make the whole thing a little silly. The story is fine; it’s the shallow, Hollywood-movie-cliché characters that detract from the fiction. And with the overwrought emotional baggage of this particular title, one just ends up thinking it’s all a little kitschy.

Lashner, in an afterword, notes that after seven novels featuring Carl, he’s going to take a break. This may be a good thing. It’s also a good opportunity for a reader to try one of the books – I suggest something different than this most recent one – and see if Victor Carl is to his liking. There are definite moments of humanistic insight in Carl’s weary cynicism, and Lashner’s action-filled romps certainly have an attraction that keeps you reading. I would just like to see a bit more realism – or a hell of a lot more farce – whenever the character returns to the scene. –Mark Rose

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OTHER BOOKGASM REVIEWS OF THIS AUTHOR:
• MARKED MAN by William Lashner