My introduction to the concept of a hitman was in 1972 when I sat in my local New York City grindhouse, The Tapia, and watched The Mechanic starring Charles Bronson and Jan-Michael Vincent. Directed by Michael Winner, the film introduced Arthur Bishop, a cold loner who enjoyed classical music, fine art and expensive wines. If it wasn’t for the killing part, he could’ve been just another tasteful bachelor from the Playboy era hanging out in his beautiful home and playing vinyl records on his state-of-the-art system.
Over the years, I’ve seen and read more than a few hitman (and hitwoman) movies and novels, but I never thought about writing my own until editor Andy Rausch invited me to contribute to his recently released Dead-End Jobs: A Hitman Anthology, published by All Due Respect Books. “An incredible collection of powerful and haunting stories that exist in that shadowy realm between tragedy, nihilism and noir,” respected Razorblade Tears author S.A. Cosby blurbed this volume of neo-pulp fictions.
Rausch put together a respectable crew of writers that include vets Max Allan Collins and Joe R. Lansdale as well as Paul D. Brazill, Nikki Dolson, Tom Leins, Chris Miller and others. A crack shot team, nobody is shooting blanks. Recently I spoke with Rausch about Dead-End Jobs and the many inspirations behind this banging collection.
Let me ask about the title Dead-End Jobs. It’s so perfect. Talk about how you came up with that.
I’d love to take credit for being the first to make the mental connection between that phrase and hitmen, but I can’t. I saw that phrase in Paul D. Brazill’s story and I knew immediately that had to be the title. I’d like to add that Paul is one of my very favorite authors too. I love his work and I think he needs to be a way bigger name than he is. If there is any justice in this world, he will gain more recognition as time passes. In my mind, Paul is one of the crime writing gods. He’s up there on the crime writing Mount Rushmore.
What inspired you to put together this collection?
A few things, actually. I had co-edited two anthologies previously, although neither of them was a straight-up crime-themed anthology. For some weird reason, I’ve always had an infatuation with hitmen. Some of my favorite novels are Max Allan Collins’s terrific Quarry series and Lawrence Block’s superb Keller series. As for films, most of my favorite films feature hitmen. So that was the first thing. The second thing was that I had been itching to put together an anthology of my own once I realized how many really talented crime writers I knew or had developed a relationship either personally or through social media. (I didn’t know all of the writers I invited to be in the anthology, but I knew a fair number of them.) Third, I realized there had never been a hitman-themed anthology before and I thought, well, there you go. So, that was the impetus.
The stories by Joe R. Lansdale (“Six-Finger Jack”) and Max Allan Collins (“Quarry’s Luck) are the only two reprints in the book. Besides the name value, what was it about those stories that made you want to reprint them in Dead-End Jobs?
To put it bluntly, they are two of my very, very favorite authors of all time, and I knew both of them through previous projects. Additionally, I have a book on Lansdale coming out from the University Press of Mississippi next year and am about to embark upon a book on Collins. I selected these stories because I thought they were both wonderfully badass stories and examples of what these men do and why they have had such long, productive careers
What is your favorite fictional (book/movie) hitman and why?
There are so many great ones, from Jules Winnfield in Pulp Fiction to Jack Carter in Get Carter to Chow Yun-Fat’s character, Jeffrey, in The Killer, but my very favorite is probably going to sound rather generic and obvious. It’s John Wick. The reason is because those movies are just insanely over-the-top and fun in ways that would make John Woo envious. And John Wick is almost a fucking Terminator. The guy is unstoppable and just plain badass.
I read something the other day that made me laugh. The person said that on screen, everyone seems to know what John Wick looks like… does Wick break the rules of a good hitman?
Probably. But then, pretty much all of the characters that Tommy and Jimmy kill in Goodfellas (based on a true story) know exactly what it is these men do. So I suspect it’s probably realistic in that world for some hitmen to be notorious in that milieu.
But if John Wick does in fact break the rules of being a good hitman, my own creation, Orlando Williams, also does this because, as I mentioned, it is widely known by the criminal world in those books who he is and where his day job is. So if they wanted, any of them could probably show up on the college campus and gun him down. But I like to think that there’s a code of conduct—a professionalism, real or not—that keeps them from doing this.
In your introduction you define hitmen as morally corrupt, but in your story “The Silver Lining,” the hitter seems very moral and the kill is actually a good thing. Is that rare?
I can’t speak to the rarity of a hitman with compassion but those are the kind of characters I always try to write. I have written three novels focusing on hitmen, two of which feature Orlando Williams (The Suicide Game and Layla’s Score), the protagonist of “The Silver Lining.” Orlando is a ridiculously fascinating and likely unrealistic character in that he’s a black hitman working for the Italian Mafia, but that’s just sort of his side hustle. His primary job is being Professor of Russian Literature at UCLA. Because of this, he’s known in the underworld as “The Professor”. But he’s not the only hitman like that I’ve written about. I’ve also written about Lefty Collins in Layla’s Score, who is a hitman who finds a little girl after doing a hit and then takes her in and raises her as his own. There’s also Chino Genetti, the hitman protagonist in Let It Kill You, who falls in love with his mark and then has to go to war with the Mafia to save her.
But are hitmen really compassionate, or is the compassionate hitman just mythic trope like the hooker with the heart of gold? It’s likely the latter, but some of my favorite fictional hitmen—particularly Jeffrey in The Killer and Michael Sullivan in Road to Perdition—are compassionate men who wind up killing to save people they love. But are they realistic? I don’t know. I’ve only met one hitman—true story, I once interviewed a hitman who had gone into witness protection, for a nonfiction book I was working on that I ended up scrapping—and I did not ask him if he was compassionate because, frankly, I was terrified of him and couldn’t wait for the interview to conclude.
As far as the idea of killing for reasons of morality or righteousness in reality, I think the person doing the killing actually becomes the very evil they are opposed to in carrying that out. So it’s a nice idea in theory, but I believe it’s actually a problematic concept.
You’ve done a few anthologies, what unique challenges did this book present?
There were no real challenges. I think my only challenges were to try and write a story that was as good or better than the other stories in the collection (no one wants to get upstaged in their own book) and to try and make this book better than the two previous anthologies, both of which I think contained some questionable stories selected by my co-editors. But there were no co-editors on this one, so there is only me (and the author) to blame if any of the stories selected fall flat.
If hitmen are so morally corrupt, why are they always so cool?
I think the occupation has to be morally corrupt in that it’s someone actually taking money to kill someone they don’t know. But then that’s essentially what soldiers do too, so what the hell do I know? As to the reason why hitmen are so cool, I think it’s because they—and all fictional criminals really—can do the things that we might sometimes want to do but can’t because the actions are morally and/or socially unacceptable, and also because we would go to prison or go to the electric chair.
You’ve written interviewed and written about Quentin Tarantino, whose Pulp Fiction characters Jules and Vincent are hitmen. Did Tarantino pass on any hitman knowledge?
Only through the film, and that lesson was essentially what Elmore Leonard’s novels were always about: criminals are real people who live real, normal lives when they’re not killing people or robbing banks or whatever their particular skill set is. That element has always been a big part of the characters I myself write, and I absolutely thank Tarantino and Elmore Leonard for teaching me that. I discovered Tarantino first, and then through him I discovered Leonard. (I’ve now written nonfiction books about both men, by the way. My volume on Leonard comes out from McFarland & Company in 2022.)
Who are you currently reading? What’s your next project?
The best book I’ve read this year (or probably the last five years) is S.A. Cosby’s Razorblade Tears. The book was just incredible. This comes on the heels of his book, Blacktop Wasteland, which was the best book I read last year. Cosby is a gift to the crime genre and he is the heir apparent to Elmore Leonard. Cosby is the best crime writer working today. There are many great crime writers, but Cosby is the cream of the crop. I tried to get him in this book but was unable. But we were lucky enough to get a good blurb from him.
As far as what I’m working on, I’m finishing the strangest crime novel you can imagine. It’s a neo-noir crime novel that takes place in Hell. Yes, that’s what I said—Hell. I’m having a blast writing it. Will it fly? Who knows? But I’m coming off of last year’s American Trash, which I feel is the best novel of my career. So I figured, why not stretch my wings a little and try to do some new, scary, and bold things? So that’s where this came from. It will be the first book in a series.
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The Gonzales Top Ten Hit List
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1. Léon: The Professional (1994)
2. Ghost Dog: The Way of the Samurai (1999)
3. Collateral (2004)
4. The Mechanic (2011 remake)
5. The Hitman (comic book created by Garth Ennis and John McCrea)
6. The Mad and the Bad by Jean-Patrick Manchette
7. Killer Joe (2012)
8. Torpedo 1936 (graphic novel) written by Enrique Sánchez Abulí/drawn by Alex Toth and Jordi Bernet,
9. La Femme Nikita (1990)
10. Shadowboxer (2005)
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