King doesn’t spare us his rapier wit and his cynical view of the depths to which humans can plunge. “Billy Summers” is a magnificent work, and it’s thoughtful, engrossing, and touching. In fact, just writing the review of it is a humbling task as I know there is no way I will be able to do the book justice. To say I wasn’t disappointed might just be the understatement of the century. So when I realized that his new novel, “Billy Summers,” wasn’t a horror story, I couldn’t wait to read it. I got married and had children, and I didn’t want to be scared anymore. But then I stopped reading horror stories. I loved his horror stories, “Christine,” “Thinner,” “Pet Cemetery,” “Cujo,” “The Shining,” I read them voraciously. I still remember, with clarity, some of the stories I read forty years ago from his collection of short stories called “Night Shift.” I still remember the stories about the 18-wheeler trucks and the one about closets. Let me just begin by saying it’s been a while since I’ve read a Stephen King novel. And in “Billy Summers,” Stephen King forces us to consider whether a hired killer can be a good person or must always be a villain by virtue of his profession. But we adults know that there is more to “goodness” than a superficial title.

How do we know whether an individual is a good person or a bad person? Children like my five-year-old grandson know that there are heroes and villains - interestingly, he chooses to be the villain in his fantasy play.

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