KELLER’S GREATEST HITS

Keller, the urban lonely guy of assassins, wistful and introspective and lethal, is as unlikely a series character as I can imagine. I can only say that I didn’t plan it this way. I wrote a short story, "Answers to Soldier," and I figured that was that. Playboy published the story, MA shortlisted it for an Edgar, and all of this made me very happy, but I didn’t see a future for Keller.

Then a couple of years later I wrote "Keller’s Therapy," and at its end he had a dog. Who would take care of it when he was on assignment? I wondered about that, and wrote "Dogs Walked, Plants Watered." And by that time I realized I was writing a novel on the installment plan. Nine of that novel’s ten chapters were published as individual short stories, most of them in Playboy. Then they were published, and the result was

1

HIT MAN.
William Morrow, 1998. Currently available as an Avon mass-market paperback.
Hit Man was published without any fanfare. No advertising, no promotion, and no great expectations on anyone’s part. But people really seemed to take to Keller---I don’t know what this says about him, and I’m afraid to think what it says about you---and the book generated no end of word of mouth, and sold like crazy. The nice people at Morrow like it when this happens, and, I have to admit, so do I. And the result, inevitably, I suppose, is. . .

 
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HIT LIST.
William Morrow, November 2000.
Because I knew from the jump that I was writing a whole book, Hit List is rather more a novel and less a collection of stories than its predecessor. It's still episodic in structure, as it would almost have to be. Keller, after all, has an episodic kind of a life. You go somewhere, you kill somebody, you come home---end of episode. But there's more of an ongoing story line, with an urgency all its own. What Keller finds out---and not a moment too soon, I might say---is that he's managed to get on somebody else's hit list. Somewhere out there, somebody's trying to hit the hit man. Hit List will be at bookstores everywhere by late October.
Preview the first chapter.
 
   

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HIT PARADE
William Morrow, July 2006/Orion, August 2006.
The third Keller novel, of which Booklist says:
"Block's legions of fans will savor his subtle wit, his consummate narrative skills, and his idiosyncratic method of celebrating the lives of working folks in America." Portions published previously in the anthologies: Murders' Row, Murder at the Race Track, Murder at the Foul Line and Transgressions; as well as in Playboy and on audiobookcafe.com.
   

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HIT AND RUN
William Morrow, June 24, 2008
The fourth Keller novel. Keller is a stamp collector. He returned to the hobby of his boyhood in the final chapters of HIT MAN, when he was contemplating retirement and figured he'd need a hobby. Stamp collecting ate up much of his retirement fund, so he's gone on working. But killing people is just what he does for a living. Stamp collecting is his life.