An Hour to Kill - Hardcover

Wellen, Edward

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0312093071 ISBN 13: 9780312093075

Publisher: St Martins Pr, 1993

Synopsis

In an ill-timed moment of generosity, a professional hit man knocks off a man beating his girlfriend, but the murdered boyfriend is the brother of a southern Florida drug kingpin, and the killer endangers his own life

About this title

Reviews

The author of Hijack builds this sometimes heavy-handed crime novel on a flimsy premise. Returning from the Caribbean, where he fulfilled his assignment to kill the Brooklyn Borough President, a mob hitman named Mal stops off in a Miami airport coffee shop and observes the brother of a notorious Colombian drug lord roughing up a beautiful woman. Mal has some time before his plane leaves (hence the title), so he kills the abusive beau and makes it look like a robbery gone awry. When the girlfriend is accused of the murder, Mal returns to Miami to extort a phony confession from one of the drug lord's underlings, whom he then dispatches in a colorful fashion. By now, the drug lord is after Mal, whom his New York boss is willing to give up for the sake of inter-gang amity. Sent back to Miami for a hit that is actually a set-up, Mal must elude the police and his outlaw enemies while saving the girl once more. There's some fun here--Wellen enjoys a good pun as much as the meticulous details of an anonymous murder. It's too hard to believe, however, that callous, cold-blooded Mal would put himself in jeopardy three times for a woman he doesn't even know.
Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Passing through Miami after completing a hit, assassin-for- hire Mal (a.k.a Harry Pace, Philip Oom, etc.) sees beautiful Marita Garcia being roughed up by Felipe Diaz, younger brother of south Florida drug kingpin Ramon, and in an inexplicable--for him--moment of chivalry, Mal kills the creep. Now he's got big trouble: Miami cops Vogelsang and Shanley are after him; the feds also want him; and Ramon has ordered a nationwide manhunt. To smoke him out, the good guys charge Marita with murder, figuring she must have been his accomplice, and the bad guy not only offers major money for news of his whereabouts but makes deals with other gang leaders to double-cross him. The bodies pile up as Mal, still strangely chivalrous, tries to get Marita off the hook and hopscotches from L.A. to Vegas to Manhattan, finally winding up in Key Biscayne for a confrontation aboard Ramon's yacht. Rendered with pulp-fiction zest and lots of black-and-blue action sequences. Still, Wellen's hardcover debut (after the paperback Hijack, 1971) does have you rooting for his antihero--and his escape into the bay does have you wondering whether he'll pop up again. -- Copyright ©1993, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

In Wellen's first book since Hijack (Ballantine, 1976), Mal, the latest antihero with a golden heart, comes to the aid of an abused woman by knocking off her tormentor. The corpse, however, is the brother of Ramon Diaz, a major drug dealer in Miami. Mal doesn't know it, but the woman is the kidnapped daughter of a Colombian journalist who has taken a stand against the drug cartel. Killing her jailer was just something for Mal to do while waiting for a plane to take him away from his lastest hired Mafia hit. Naturally, the rest of the book concerns itself with Mal and Marita's desperately trying to extricate themselves from the clutches of Ramon. This is suspense with an edge, in the tradition of Leslie Charteris's Saint. If Mal weren't totally amoral, one could almost like him. Though the story is violent, Wellen resists making this into an exercise in slice and dice. His writing is tight and to the point, and readers will find the book tough to put down. This book would make an excellent choice for summer vacation reading lists.
- Randall L. Schroeder, Augustana Coll., Rock Island, Ill.
Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Edition details

• Publisher: St Martins Pr
• Publication date: 1993
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0312093071
• ISBN 13: 9780312093075
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1