The Hitman Diaries [Paperback]

Danny King (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: August 1, 2003

For Ian, being a hitman means good money, security and a neverending supply of contracts. It sometimes causes problems with his lady friends, but by and large, they accept his frequent absences. But Ian faces a moral conflict when he’s given a contract to get rid of Janet, the only woman who really understands him. And moral conflicts are not something that Ian can handle. Dark and funny, The Hitman Diaries continues Danny King’s unique take on what makes lowlife characters tick.

Editorial Reviews

Review

'One of the few writers to make me laugh out loud. Danny King's brilliant at making you love characters who essentially are quite bad people.' David Baddiel 'King spends his free time hanging out with some 'tasty' geezers. He's also written a couple of excellent books about the nonlegit lifestyle choice, The Burglar Diaries and Bankrobber Diaries.' Loaded

About the Author

Danny King was born in Slough, near London in 1969. After leaving school, he went to work on a building site where he met his fair share of petty criminals and general nutters. In the late 1980s, following convictions of various offences, including burglary, he gave up crime, got an education and started to work as a journalist on top shelf magazines. He lives in South London.

Product Details

• Paperback: 256 pages
• Publisher: Serpent's Tail (August 1, 2003)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1852428287
• ISBN-13: 978-1852428280
• Product Dimensions: 7.7 x 6.6 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 7 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (5 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,560,668 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

British writer Danny King was born in 1969 in Slough, a town made famous throughout the white collar world as the much-lampooned location for the original series of The Office. He never worked in an office while there but he did work as a bricklayer's laborer, a supermarket shelf stacker, a painter & decorator, a postman and a magazine editor and today uses these rich experiences to dodge all of the aforementioned. Besides books he has also written for the both big and small screens and the stage: his credits include the BBC sitcom Thieves Like Us, the forthcoming 2012 movie Wild Bill and the stage show The Pornographer Diaries, which played throughout the 2007 Edinburgh Fringe Festival. He lives in Chichester, West Sussex with wife, Jeannie and two children and divides his time between writing and wondering what to write about. For further details go to dannykingbooks.com.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

2 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Hilareous, February 9, 2006

By 

Dark Crime Lover "tim-stpete" (Saint Petersburg, FL United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Hitman Diaries (Paperback)

Dark and delightful. If think you might enjoy a sort of English Carl Hiaasen this book is for you.

2 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Morbid humour at its best!, December 11, 2003

By 

Elizabeth Lee (Singapore) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Hitman Diaries (Paperback)

To tell the truth, I borrowed this book from my library because of its cute pink cover - it struck me as weird that a book titled as such would use this colour theme usually meant for those diabetic-inducing novels or whatever is associated with 'cute' book genres! But I never regretted borrowing the book; I fully intend to get it from my bookstore as soon as I can.

Danny King's humour shines through in this book, clearly meant only for those who are able to look at the world in a crooked and morbid view. I feel that it's kinda like in the same vein as 'Kill Bill' (another fantastic movie!) but without all the blood and gore (unless you really go and visualise it all in your mind). But as you read the book further, you start to sympathise with the lead character, Ian Bridges, who only wants to find his leukemia/coma girl while doing his hit jobs for the mob boss JB - which is kinda similar to everyone of us searching for that one great love, ain't it?

Plenty of hilarious and albeit unrealistic (at least to me) and totally fantastic situations but hey it's supposed to be fiction. But Danny King made each character lovable in their own individual way and you start to cheer on Ian's side in his quest for love! If you can't find the ridiculousness in any kind of situation, this is definitely not the book for you.

This book has made me a Danny King fan and now, excuse me while I go get the other two books in the series...

4.0 out of 5 stars Fun Filled Account of a Hitman's Quest to Find a Girl, June 19, 2011

By 

James N Simpson (Gold Coast, QLD Australia) - See all my reviews
(TOP 1000 REVIEWER)   

This review is from: The Hitman Diaries (Paperback)

Danny King's the Hitman Diaries, is a narration by Ian Bridges, a London underworld hitman who recounts not only various hits he has makes since the beginning of the story where we pick up his life midway through a date with an overweight newsagent worker which just isn't going the way he thought. You see Ian has been on a lifelong quest to find a girl he could love and who would be grateful for his unconditional love. He wants an attractive girl yes, but preferably with something wrong like a deformity, cancer or something like this so he can stick by her, care for her and she'll know without a doubt that he loves her faults and all. So when his latest date is coming to a disastrous end and a thug and his white trash woman encouraging him on decides to beat him up in the car park he of course instinctively goes into hitman mode to save himself. What follows in the immediate pages is an extremely comical journey to his boat which he uses to dispose of his victims where the body count just keeps rising much to Ian's annoyance.

This is only night one of Ian's tale, which like a share stock graph goes up in down in quality and pace of the story. At times it's brilliant, very funny and even informative. Along for his various hits is very enjoyable as well as his various failed relationships. Then at others Ian gets side tracked by lengthy arguments with his dead mother which don't really add anything to the story and get quite boring at times. If they had been edited out the pace of the story would have flowed a lot better. Still it's hard to put this book down once you start as you do want to know what happens next, and will Ian ever find happiness. Realistic wise it's like lots of machine guns action high body count movie, not believable at all but a lot of fun to experience none the less. I'd definitely check out other novels by Danny King.