Reviews for A Gun for Sale

The average rating for A Gun for Sale based on 2 reviews is 3 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2010-11-17 00:00:00 Makoto Kitajima Good old fashion crime noir that still holds up today to the test of time. This was my second Graham Greene and it was better than the first (The Man Within...which is unfair to judge him by. It was his first book and even he said it was poop.) I shouldn't have waited twenty years between the two! This Gun For Hire is actually A Gun For Sale, but whatever the title it has all the noiry hallmarks that defined the era, formed the Hollywood version of crime noir and thus spread the good word back to the people en masse. Hell, I even read this stark thriller in black and white! Okay. The plot. A hired killer gets double-crossed and goes after the guy that stiffed him, all while being chased by the coppers. A woman accidentally gets swept up in it. A little Stockholm syndrome later and now she's fully involved. But the book is farther reaching than that. War profiteers come into it. Moral ambiguity abounds. Plenty of bad people get theirs in unexpected ways. It's all very surprisingly satisfying actually!

Review # 2 was written on 2012-04-16 00:00:00 William Mccabe When a hare-lipped assassin named Raven is paid for a job with stolen cash, he becomes wanted for robbery and goes on the run with a hostage named Anne. I was not a tremendous fan of This Gun for Hire. The book read like it had an identity crisis of sorts, like it didn't know whether it wanted to be a straight up thriller or literary fiction. I don't feel like it did either particularly well. The premise is great. I love the idea of a hitman double crossed by getting paid with stolen cash the police had serial numbers for and then looking for vengeance. Raven is very interesting protagonist, an ugly man in an ugly world. I liked the characters of Anne and Raven quite a bit and had high hopes at the start. The book just never really grabbed me. The explorations of the characters bogged down the thrilling bits to the point where I was doing housework instead of reading. That's about all I have to say. I got a pretty meh feeling from this book and was glad when it was over. Two stars. It was not without its moments.