Who is Conrad Hirst?: A Novel [Paperback]

Kevin Wignall (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: November 13, 2007

Who is Conrad Hirst? Knowing the answer could get you killed. Not knowing could get him killed.

Conrad Hirst is a hired killer working for a German crime boss. Disturbed by the death of his girlfriend ten years earlier and still bearing the scars of post-traumatic stress after serving as a mercenary, he's valued precisely because of how broken he is, by how coldly he kills, by the solitary existence he leads.

But something has happened on Conrad's most recent job that's shattered his equilibrium and left him determined to quit. Fortunately for him, there's a simple way to leave the business and begin life anew: Only four people know who he is and what he's done -- kill those four people, and Conrad is a free man.

A simple plan, but life is never that simple, and as Conrad's scheme unravels, he quickly realizes he isn't the only one doing the killing. With the certainties of his life crumbling around him, he's no longer sure whom he's been working for, or why, or what they want of him now. In fact, he can't even answer the ever-looming and ominous question: Who is Conrad Hirst?

Fast-paced, dark, and disturbing, Kevin Wignall's newest page-turner is the story of a broken young man seeking retribution against those who have used him for their own gain, and of the devastating secret that fuels his anger. It is a story of identity and loss, of missed opportunities and the cruelty of fate.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

British author Wignall (For the Dogs) successfully channels Robert Ludlum in this lean, muscular thriller with more than a few parallels to Ludlum's Jason Bourne series. Conrad Hirst, a remorseless European hit man burnt out by a life of violence, plans to walk away from the business by eliminating the only four people who know his identity. Of course, it isn't that simple. Hirst's first target, Frank Dillon, admits as he's dying that he has lied to Hirst consistently about Hirst's true employer. Later, Hirst learns that the man he thought was his employer, German crime boss Julius Eberhardt, was only using Eberhardt's identity and may in fact be connected with the CIA. Hirst's ignorance of most tradecraft is a little less than plausible, as is his naïvete in trusting the attractive women he meets just as his plan hits high gear. Still, Wignall's ability to blend meaningful characterizations with suspenseful action shows a talent that many other genre writers would envy. A film, to be directed by Liam Kan and Grant Hodgson, is in the works. (Nov.)
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From Booklist

British assassin Conrad Hirst wants out of the killing business. But four sinister associates must be eliminated before he can embark on a new life. He guns down one; the others turn up either missing or dead. All along, Conrad thought he was working for a German crime boss; is it possible that his paychecks are being cut by the CIA? Conrad's instincts tell him to trust no one, including the smart, sexy French woman he encounters along the way. With each anxiety-ridden day, he sees his dream of a peaceful existence slipping away. Wignall (For the Dogs, 2004) writes eloquently about criminals with a conscience, weaving together Conrad's precarious pursuit of "retirement" with his poignant (and, at times, maudlin) letters to a dead lover. Clipped prose drives this lean tale about a man less likely to go out with a whimper than a bang. "He'd experienced enough to know that survival wasn't an end in itself, that it was better to die trying to live than not live at all." Block, Allison

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Product Details

• Paperback: 227 pages
• Publisher: Simon & Schuster; Original edition (November 13, 2007)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1416540725
• ISBN-13: 978-1416540724
• Product Dimensions: 8.4 x 5.6 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.6 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (9 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,216,281 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

KJ Wignall was born in Belgium to English parents (his father was a soldier, stationed there at the time). His early childhood was spent as an army child, which he loved. He learned to drive a tank when he was seven, went to school in a German castle for a couple of years and lived in lots of different places. He lives in England now but still travels a lot. "Blood" is his first book for young adults.

Find out more at www.kjwignall.com

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

5 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars How Can a Hit Man Retire?, February 19, 2008

By 

Donald Mitchell "Jesus Loves You!" (Thanks for Providing My Reviews over 109,000 Helpful Votes Globally) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Who is Conrad Hirst?: A Novel (Paperback)

Imagine that you suffer a great loss of a loved one. Your first reaction is numbness: To feel something, you join a war. That experience brutalizes you so that killing soon means nothing. Not surprisingly, you become a hired killer working for a German gangster.

But something happens during your last hit that makes you want to retire. As far as you know, only four people know you are an assassin. Why not eliminate those four and retire to live a better life?

That's the purpose of Conrad Hirst at age 32, after a decade of killing. But Hirst finds that things are not as they seem . . . and everything changes.

This premise is a very interesting one for such a book. I rated the premise as a five. Unfortunately, the resolution of the premise isn't very credible, palatable, or interesting. I rated the execution of that premise as a two. The average is a three.

The author holds back a surprise that's very easy to anticipate but that is intended to be a big revelation. I think the story would have worked better if this revelation had come at the beginning of the book.

I felt that the book's gratuitous killing made me feel dirty. That's not an experience I had hoped to gain by reading this book.

Unless you are desperately hungry for a Jason Bourne-like book that's not nearly as well done, I suggest you skip this book.

5 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars More quality from Wignall, January 22, 2008

By 

London Reader - See all my reviews

This review is from: Who is Conrad Hirst?: A Novel (Paperback)

As per usual (which is not a negative), Wignall delivers tight, sparse fare that bowls along handsomely without indulgence or distraction. His determination to focus on his protagonists' minds, rather than their hardware (as so many do), elevates the work from workaday to thought-provoking.

Sure, the wont of fieldcraft may irk; but it's soon forgotten and we continually wonder how Hirst will extricate himself from his predicament. The plot twist toward the end is effective and, for my part, unforeseen.

5 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Exit Plan, December 28, 2007

By 

Gloria Feit (Long Beach, NY) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Who is Conrad Hirst?: A Novel (Paperback)

The reader first meets Conrad Hirst at a point when he has been a hired killer for ten years [he is now 32 years old], having killed, by his best estimation, dozens of men and three women. Something about his last "assignment" has filled him with revulsion for what he has become, and he vows to end that persona immediately. He converses in his head with his lost love, Anneke, who died in the war in Yugoslavia from which he ran after her death, straight into his "profession." But now, "the Klemperer job changed everything--he understood that now. Perhaps for the first time ever, as much as Conrad tried to suppress it, he feared what he didn't know about the world, and most of all, he feared what he didn't know about himself."

Accomplishing this will be no easy task, and he determines that in order to erase who he is, there must be four final killings: Frank, his handler; Fabio, his document forger; Freddie, his arms dealer; and Julius Eberhardt, his employer, the German crime boss who had hired him all those years ago. He feels he needs to leave "with the right blood on his hands." The first of these is done easily, and he shoots Frank. But before he dies, Frank utters these words: "I lied..." About what? "Everything." He gets an inkling of the meaning of these cryptic words when he soon approaches Eberhardt to kill him, and is aghast to see that Eberhardt is not the man who hired him as his personal assassin a decade earlier. It is obvious that the first thing he must do is find out the identity of the man for whom he has been killing people. But then others start dying. And his new priority, beyond reinventing himself and leaving the killing behind, is to discover who is now doing the killing, before he himself becomes a victim.

The author, born in Belgium and now living in England, with this, his fourth mystery novel, has created a fascinating protagonist with whom the reader cannot help but feel sympathy. Well, almost. The book is well-written, filled with surprises and suspense, and is recommended