THE HITMAN'S LAMENT

by Henry Holtzman ‧ RELEASE DATE: N/A

A small-time director is forced to make a movie written by a ruthless gangster with artistic aspirations in Holtzman’s novel.

Howard Moss has many of the trappings of conventional success—a beautiful home in Connecticut, a luxury car, and a career directing television commercials. However, he’s lost in ennui—his wife, Anne, divorced him, and he’s estranged from his daughter, Molly, who loathes him. He’s all but given up on his youthful ambitions to become a serious artist. Then, a peculiar opportunity—or a catastrophe, depending on how one views it—arises for Howard: His wayward brother, Bernie, a minor gangster, shows up at his door pleading for help. He owes a monstrous amount of money to the Mafiosi Bromberg brothers, and for some reason they demand to see Howard. When Howard sits down with Watso and Notso, a morbidly obese pair, they demand that he direct a movie written by Vinny Pisacane, a notoriously brutal gangster who keeps a live crocodile in his home, to which he sometimes feeds his enemies. Howard accepts the job—he really doesn’t have a choice—but unexpectedly takes a real interest in the script, The Hitman’s Lament, a story about the criminal underworld and a glamorization of that milieu vividly depicted by the author. Predictably, Howard falls deeply in love with the movie’s lead actor (and Vinny’s girlfriend), Gabrielle Silverman, almost instantaneously, a romantic attachment described in formulaic terms typical of the author’s writing: “I would die for her. I would kill for her. I was deathly afraid that she could sense that. When the audition was done, I was totally lost in love.”

The best element of Holtzman’s entertaining novel is his portrayal of Howard’s passionate interest in the movie—one might expect he would be violently opposed to the idea of making it. Instead, he’s not only committed to it, but fights for various changes with a mad devotion to artistic integrity that could endanger his life (“I would fight to the death for my idea. I lost some of my best clients that way. This time, I could lose a lot more than a client. And if I fought for my idea without getting murdered, and lost; what would I do? Would I go along? Or walk away? Could I walk away? Or would I become the crocodile’s lunch?”). Much of the story is constructed out of hoary clichés—even Vinny, the criminal who really wants to express his creative side, is constructed from familiar stereotypes. The dangerous love affair between Howard and Gabrielle seems drawn from a prefabricated selection of fictional storylines. However, despite the novel’s general lack of originality and the author’s uninspired prose style, this remains an irresistibly enjoyable book, mostly because Howard is such a compelling protagonist. While everyone else sees disaster looming—Anne and Molly both reach out to him and beg him not to take such a perilous job working for a sociopathic murderer—he sees a chance to recover some of his squandered artistic dreams. This eccentricity keeps the book afloat and ultimately makes it a worthwhile adventure.

Despite its lack of freshness, a thoroughly enjoyable novel.

Pub Date: N/A

ISBN: N/A

Page Count: 263

Publisher: Manuscript

Review Posted Online: May 8, 2023

Review Program: Kirkus Indie

Categories:

SUSPENSE | THRILLER | SUSPENSE