Hit on the House

Jon A. Jackson is one of crime fiction’s masters, and Hit on the House, acclaimed by Jim Harrison as “an unqualifiably brilliant novel,” is note-perfect and deeply satisfying. Hal Good, a contract killer, is hired to wax Big Side Sedlacek—a mob heavy who’s been on the take. Picked up as a possible witness, he switched ID with a drunk and walks out of jail before Mulheisen can question him. Soon other Mob higher-ups begin to meet bloody ends, and a girl from Mulheisen’s past turns up married to an abrasive computer entrepreneur with a suspicious number of friends in “the business.” Big Sid’s daughter Helen is looking for vengeance; and the Mob’s freelance “investigator” is beating Mulheisen to all of his leads. As the investigation gets ever more unwieldy the body count threatens to grow, while the millions of dollars skimmed by Big Sid and his unnamed partners stay missing.