Hit Parade by Lawrence Block

I have to confess that Keller is probably responsible for getting me back into stamp collecting. For this, I owe him a great debt of gratitude. Lawrence Block is brilliant for many reasons, but his richly drawn stamp-collecting hit man is high on the list. I don't know that there was a lot more to say about Keller, though, so I'm okay with having just three novels in his series. Plus, Dot grates on my nerves after a while.

Hit List by Lawrence Block

I like Keller. I like the situations he finds himself in, and the puzzles he has to solve to address them. I like his creativity, and his sublte, wry humor. This second Keller novel maintains some of the episodic nature of the first (that's Keller's life, after all), while still tying it all together with an overarching problem to resolve. It's the best of both worlds. The series still lacks some sort of essential spark that would propel it into Must Read rather than Enjoyable Enough Read, but at least they're stories I haven't read a thousand times before.