Rob Hart follows up his recent brilliant novels, THE WAREHOUSE and THE PARADOX HOTEL, with ASSASSINS ANONYMOUS. Once again, his skills as a writer and creator of unique plots are on full display.

The book’s title comes from the support group located on Manhattan’s Lower East Side for reformed assassins and killers. Mark, whose code name for many years has been Pale Horse, is being sponsored by Kenji, an old colleague who runs Assassins Anonymous. Mark is fast approaching his first year without killing anyone. The goal of the group is to avoid death (theirs or someone else’s), but that doesn’t mean you can’t use your skills to hurt someone every once in a while.

This is extremely difficult for someone like Mark, as Pale Horse is known as the world’s #1 assassin, followed closely by the deadly Azrael. Hart opens the novel with a quote from Blaise Pascal that perfectly fits Mark’s current situation: “All of humanity’s problems stem from man’s inability to sit quietly in a room alone.” It is the inactivity that makes Mark’s newfound commitment to peace so hard, especially when he is afraid to admit how much fun he has going full-on assassin on someone.

"ASSASSINS ANONYMOUS is a pleasure to read and is so different from similar thrillers involving assassins or hitmen. Hart’s use of language is smart and witty, and the emotion behind his characters is pure genius."

Following a morning meeting, Mark is brutally attacked for no good reason by a large Russian man sporting a mohawk. Neither is killed, but Mark ends up with a nice-sized dagger in his side for good measure. He drags himself bleeding to the only person in the area who can handle clandestine medical procedures of this kind. Astrid gives him painkillers, ensures that no major arteries or intestines are nicked, and sews him up. When Mark heads home to retrieve the money to pay Astrid, his downstairs neighbor indicates that she has his cat --- P. Kitty --- since his apartment was firebombed and is currently filled with firefighters from the neighborhood precinct. He realizes that someone out there wants him dead, so he takes P. Kitty in his carrying case and heads back to Astrid’s.

Mark would love to call on one of his meeting friends for help, but he doesn’t want to involve them in something that may be much bigger than them. He also respects their need to stick to their non-violence/non-murder programs. While with Astrid, Mark gets a message from his old handler, Ravi, who summons him to Singapore for a possible job. He obliges and is accompanied by Astrid and P. Kitty.

In ASSASSINS ANONYMOUS, we learn the difference between hitmen and assassins. A hitman gets paid by a political or criminal organization to kill someone. An assassin kills for religious or political purposes and does not always get paid. Before Mark connects with Ravi, we are taken back 15 years to another Singapore mission, where Mark enters a room expecting only two combatants and ends up silencing over half a dozen before taking down his target. We then see the initial meeting between him and Ravi, where they decide on his code name going forward. Mark likes the biblical death ring that Pale Horse has to it.

In the present, Ravi needs to know if Mark has come in from the cold after his year of killing sobriety because the boss needs him on the job. The last thing they want is for Pale Horse to be seen as expendable and the need for Azrael to take him down. Mark indicates that he is planning to stick to the program but desperately wants to know the identity of the Russian who attacked him as he must be stopped. Ravi provides some small leads that take Mark and company to London.

While there, they meet with an agent who handles the technical end of the assassins network. Gaius shows Mark what is currently listed on the dark web regarding Pale Horse and how the Russian was able to locate him so easily. What he learns sends him back to New York City. After meeting with a Russian crime lord in the Brighton Beach section of Brooklyn, Mark finally determines the identity of his attacker. How can he defeat such a man without any killing involved? This makes the finale so interesting, and Rob Hart has cooked up some incredible twists along the way.

ASSASSINS ANONYMOUS is a pleasure to read and is so different from similar thrillers involving assassins or hitmen. Hart’s use of language is smart and witty, and the emotion behind his characters is pure genius. I would love to see a film adaptation of this book, as well as more fiction featuring our antihero, in the very near future.