FAMILY OF KILLERS - Memoirs of an Assassin by Stephen W. Briggs

Published by: Black Rose Writing
Publication date: January 13, 2022
Pages: 324
Genres: Thriller (classified by publisher); (my labels:) Historical Fiction, Horror
POV: close third person omniscient, past tense
Narrator: authorial thoughts, opinions and judgments well beyond the age and experience of the younger generation's characters
Opening setting: Portadown, Ireland, 1977
Other significant locations: Northern Ireland; Guelph, Ontario, Canada
Number of named or identified characters: about 70

Publisher's Summary:

David is pulled from his bed; he is seven. His father, freelancing for British intelligence, is identified while attempting to assassinate a terrorist. Now a wanted man, he must relocate his family from Northern Ireland to Canada.

David is raised in the family's business. A business that, eliminates those that can't keep secrets, sells weapons around the world, and hides those that need protection. As a teen David struggles with his future in the family business and his mother's desire to have him live a customary life.

Nigel, the man that identified David's father, entangles himself with David and his family again. Now, David is determined to meet Nigel, and utilize the skills he has developed.

As an adult, David works for governments and organizations, doing the work they cannot. He continues to refine his skills as he learns about his family's perplexing history.

While on a large job for the IRA, Nigel is caught and imprisoned.

David patiently waits for Nigel's release as the family business grows and David's skills are required around the world.

Finally, David has his opportunity to meet Nigel; only one of them will walk away from the encounter satisfied.

My Review:

The book opens with seven-year-old David's parents awakening him, and his mother carrying his two-year-old sister like a running back not wanting to fumble the ball--never mind we're in Northern Ireland where that sport isn't played. Explosions and gunfire don't expedite the painfully slow dressing of a child by unbelievably patient parents. Soon, we learn that the young child knows his immediate and extended family are illegal gunrunners, bomb makers and international terrorists. Fabulous potential.

As David and his best friend, Phil, reach their mid-teens, they push to join the illicit family businesses, but I felt like David forgot his dad is an assassin. David's mother agreed early on that their son could be integrated fully into the family business, but later she argued against it, although she appears to have no say in the matter. David's father proves her powerless since he would kill the mother of his children to get his way.

This book provides an authoritative, transparent and violent view into the Troubles in Ireland in the 1970s as seen from these organized mobsters and killers. Kenton, David's grandfather, and James, David's father, manipulate human networks across their community and the world. Many historic truths are woven into the story, including exposing British soldiers (including David's family) during World War II interrogating Nazis, torturing and killing German soldiers in the field. In Post-War Europe, David's father killed European snitches for helping the Nazis, and for equal opportunity, he also hunted down and killed retired military Nazis. Additionally, they traced and recovered treasures the Nazis had pillaged, not to return artifacts to the rightful original owners but to steal the spoils for themselves. While the history and learning was horrific yet interesting to me, these irredeemable family members taking pride in their war crimes disgusted me. Late in the book, real world events impact David and his family's nemesis, although each terror plot comes wrapped inside a delusional conspiracy theory, such as stating as fact that the CIA engineered the Oklahoma City bombing.

Dysfunctional relationships thread throughout this story. A husband wants something but cannot bear discussing his life goals with his wife and assumes she would disagree with his priorities, so instead of communicating, he orchestrates a ruse that forces his family to choose the outcome that achieves his goal. The husband, James, repeats this pattern over and over with her, including lying to his wife and coaching his son to do the same. I couldn't connect with the half a dozen core characters who are evil killers and thieves.

The relationship between James (husband) and Elizabeth (wife) is unequal. He makes all major decisions for her. In his many monologues, she is not allowed to question him or participate. The theme of the powerful men not allowing subordinates to speak back to them shows up at least four times. Eventually, Elizabeth discounts her feelings and plays along, even miming to zip her lips, abiding by James's wishes while he delivers crushing news and destroys the life she thought she had. Ever resilient or maybe uninvested in her own life, she jokes about turning him in for the reward money.

The notion of a spouse tricking their loved one into a life-changing ruse could have been fodder for a great deceit and a powerful read, but I was not drawn to either of these adults, although I felt sympathy for their young boy in the beginning. (Spoiler Alert) But by his mid-teens, I had lost interest in him--David, who shows no feelings or remorse at his first human kill. At the midpoint, I lost my connections to all characters. Their assassin's creed of never killing out of emotion nor fun nor revenge but only for money did not warm them to me. As a teen, David's father violated this creed and wigged out as a raging homicidal maniac. Even David's main mentor, his grandfather, violated this creed and slaughtered people for revenge. I'm not a doctor, but I'm pretty sure they're all diagnosable with antisocial personality disorder, which when told a certain way could have been a great tale.

The middle of the story bogged down as the grandfather told nearly his entire life story from his teenage years to the present as fourteen-year-old David hung on his every word with an uncharacteristic level of interest. Near the halfway point, David and his father talk of having done a lot of hunting and killing of animals together, yet that was a missed opportunity never showing the hunting in scene, which might have made a high tension point of loss or coming of age.

(Spoiler Alert) A new story line happened about 60% of the way through the book, introducing an international pedophile ring with their kidnapping compound "owned by some Arabs". The highest levels of the U.S. government ran the pedophile ring and protected it, including the Senate, the FBI, the CIA, and even the NTSB. Then a mega-church pastor flew his helicopter to meet with MLB umpires and Tennis professionals to pay them off to throw games for him so he can place big money bets on underdogs in upcoming games, all the while the pastor would rather be visiting strip joints or harvesting more children from Afghanistan to become drug mules or sex slaves. This pulled me so far away from the core book, I barely made it back.

After 70% of the book, David had a surprising reversal, noting he could no longer see the line between good and bad--a line which has yet to make an appearance in this story as far as I could tell.

More than three quarters of the way through the book, our psychopath, David, had his first empathy for another human when he considered not killing a philandering husband home with his wife and daughter. A character arc?

Many inconsistencies echoed through the story. We flashback to 1988 when David and Phil go through an induction ritual together in Canada with both their families, but this point of no return had already happened to them in 1984 a third of the way into the book. I didn't understand confronting the question of "are you 'in or out' for life?" twice. Across the story, their rules as assassins varied heavily as did their punishment or lack thereof for betraying their families. After the assassin gang decisively kills for revenge, David appears bothered that he has avenged a murdered relative. James comes out of assassination-retirement to kill someone, coordinated in time with David, but shortly thereafter (again) comes out of retirement to return to assassinating.

I got distracted by the repetition. Many times, the action propelled me through riveting page-turning fury, but the dialogue seemed too formal for this family. Maybe I missed what caused this, but often the characters appeared to forget something significant that they knew or had learned just a few pages before, which meant they would then repeat their learning or have redundant discussions.

Structurally, I enjoyed the bookended opening and closing scenes, which mirrored each other, and by the end of the story, all the main questions were answered and closed in a way that felt natural, at least for this crew.

This premise drew me in when I started, and I loved the historical and real context, but the conspiracy theories threw me, and I couldn't connect with the characters.

But maybe you should read about this family of assassins and decide what you think.

I received an advanced copy of this book in exchange for an honest review. All thoughts and opinions in this review are my own. ( )