#18: Five for Them, One for Me, with Rob Hart
Hart's latest, ASSASSINS ANONYMOUS, is out June 11
Few writers kick the doors open and announce their entrance the way Rob Hart did a decade ago with NEW YORKED, the first in his Ash McKenna series. It was a strong and fierce introduction to Hart, and McKenna showed an incredible talent for reinvention over the series, the books ranging from urban thriller to southern noir to spy drama before bringing it back to the streets of New York in POTTER’S FIELD.
Hart himself has showed a similar talent for reinvention, following up the McKenna books with the acclaimed speculative novels THE WAREHOUSE and THE PARADOX HOTEL. He returns to thriller territory with his latest, ASSASSINS ANONYMOUS, which follows Mark—once’s the world’s most feared assassin, but now part of a 12-step group for reformed killers—as he travels the world to find out who is trying to kill him. It’s out June 11.
It’s a shotgun blast of a book, smart and thrilling, a page-turner with questions about redemption between bone-crunching fight scenes. Hart’s a natural storyteller with more on his mind than just action, and ASSASSINS ANONYMOUS is nothing less than a home run.
He’s also the latest “Five for Them, One for Me.”
Let’s go.
FIVE FOR THEM
1. Tell us a little about your newest novel, ASSASSINS ANONYMOUS. What was the origin point for the story?
ASSASSINS ANONYMOUS is basically if John Wick got into a 12-step recovery program for killers. I’ve been wanting to write an assassin novel forever, and I always had some sort of group-therapy setting in mind, but when I thought about it in terms of recovery, the whole thing snapped together. I just wanted to dig down into that moral gray area of these stories, where we cheer for someone, like John Wick, to shoot endless people in the head… but all those people he shot have families, or someone who loved them, and those people’s lives are harder in the aftermath. It seemed like there was a lot of territory to cover there, while also telling a story about someone who truly wanted to grow and change—a process that never comes easy, but especially so when your stock and trade was killing people.
2. The protagonist for ASSASSINS ANONYMOUS is Mark, a former killer now in recovery and working through his past. Redemption feels like a thread throughout your work—in particular your Ash McKenna series. What draws you back to this theme?
I think we’re all trying to be a little better, and we struggle with that. I struggle with that—the difference between who I am and who I want to be. That’s where interesting stories come from. Because that’s the thing that really matters here: whether I’m writing about assassins or time travel shit, whatever the hook or the big idea is, it all comes down to the characters, and what they’re trying to find. And it doesn’t matter what that thing is that they think they’re trying to find—what they’re really trying to find is themselves.
3. Something notable with ASSASSINS ANONYMOUS is your handling of scale; the action and characters never become too outrageous, and the stakes remain heartbreakingly real and personal. Talk about taking an idea like “12 Steps for assassins” and keeping it emotionally honest without letting it slide into parody.
That was a huge challenge! I knew going into it that I had to pay respect to recovery programs, because they save people’s lives. I didn’t want to treat it as window dressing. But I’m also playing into a bit of a fantasy realm. I asked Alma Katsu to blurb this for me, and she worked for the CIA. I basically told her that I was writing the Lord of the Rings version of what she did for a living. That’s what this feels like to me. I wanted big characters and big action but the thing that really mattered was making sure the human journeys felt authentic.
4. ASSASSINS ANONYMOUS is a return to a more “traditional” thriller after two speculative novels (THE WAREHOUSE and THE PARADOX HOTEL). What were the takeaways from writing those books that you got to apply to this one?
The biggest takeaway was that modern thrillers are so much easier. With WAREHOUSE I spent a lot of time researching the economic factors that went into writing an anti-Amazon book. With PARADOX I was trying to understand and convey a reasonable system of time travel. With this, I just sat down and wrote. There was research to do along the way but I think working on those books, as complicated as they were, sharpened my knives a bit, so writing this felt almost like a vacation. And as much as I love playing around in that mixed-genre space, it was nice to knuckle down and focus on something a little more straight-forward.
5. I love the dedication for the book: “This one’s for me.” Tell me more.
That is a very long story, which I am not going to recount here in full (though I will over drinks if you ask nicely and buy the first round). But essentially, I was at a point in my career where I wanted to write a book without any expectation of what anyone else would think—not editors, agents, Hollywood, whomever—and just have fun. This is the first time in a while I felt like I was just letting go of expectation and having fun with the process.
ONE FOR ME
1. Through much of the book, Mark’s strongest relationship—certainly one he’s most protective of—is with his cat, P. Kitty. What other rapper/feline variations did you come up with, or was that always the one?
The cat was always named P. Kitty, because that was the name of my grandmother’s cat (I think my younger brother and sister named him). No spoilers, but I thought giving Mark a cat would humanize him a bit, and add a little bit of narrative complication because he now has to lug this thing around the world with him as he’s trying to survive—but I also love that the cat is ultimately the one who saves him.
SHAMELESS SHILLING
My story “Dark Was the Night, Cold Was the Ground” is part of an astounding lineup that includes S.A. Cosby, the aforementioned Rob Hart, Laurel Hightower, and more in BISHOP RIDER LIVES: AN ANTHOLOGY OF RETRIBUTION, edited by Hector Acosta and Beau Johnson. Each story takes place in the world of Bishop Rider, the vigilante creation of Beau Johnson. The collection comes out June 3.
I’ll be part of a conversation with several other contributors to the anthology, discussing BISHOP RIDERS LIVES tomorrow night (Friday, May 31) starting at 8 p.m. EST at Paper Cuts Live, the live interview podcast hosted by Brad Proctor and Jason Grell. Come by and check us out.
That’s all we’ve got for now. Thanks for coming. See you next time, and hey, let’s be careful out there.
A good one, James!