John Keller Books in Order

Keller lives quietly in New York until assignments send him across the country to kill strangers. These linked adventures follow a professional assassin whose attempts at therapy, romance, and companionship complicate his search for an ordinary life.

Keller balances stamp collecting and ordinary city life with traveling assignments as a professional assassin. When jobs begin going wrong, he realizes another killer is hunting him, forcing a man accustomed to choosing targets to become one.

Keller wants to build a retirement fund, so he tells Dot to send more assassination jobs his way. These linked adventures follow the stamp-collecting killer as less selective assignments bring greater risks and uncomfortable reflections on his future.

Keller plans to retire after one final assassination job in Des Moines. When an Ohio governor is murdered and Keller's face appears as the wanted suspect, he must survive without working identification, much cash, or contact with Dot.

Retired in New Orleans, Keller faces financial pressure when the economy falters. A phone call draws the stamp-collecting former assassin back into paid killing, testing the distance between his new domestic life and the profession he left behind.

Living under a new identity in New Orleans, Keller renovates houses and enjoys family life and stamp collecting. When the economy damages his business, a phone call draws him back to contract killing and the risks of his former profession.

The attacks of September 11 force New York hit man Keller to reconsider his familiar routines and assumptions. As he continues taking assignments, his reflections on the city and his profession become an effort to adjust to a changed world.

On a reconnaissance visit to his target's Dallas-area home, hit man Keller attends a party and studies the surroundings. Noticing a child in trouble in the swimming pool forces him to act in a way that complicates his assignment.

An astrological reading gives Keller unsettling insights and a warning about a particular date. The professional killer considers what the prediction means, but accepting another assignment brings his usual practical decisions into conflict with the possibility of an unfavorable fate.

Hit man Keller begins seeing a psychotherapist while trying to conceal how he earns his living. As their sessions develop, the therapist's own personal problems intrude, placing Keller's search for understanding alongside the dangerous methods he uses to solve difficulties.

Hit man Keller travels to Des Moines for an assignment and settles into a motel while waiting for instructions. This episode, drawn from Hit and Run, places his familiar working routine at the start of an unforeseen upheaval.

Keller receives an unusual assignment: kill a dog in Manhattan rather than a human target. For a hit man who once owned a dog himself, the job raises concerns unlike those of his usual contracts.

Keller attends a baseball game with more than sporting interest in designated hitter Floyd Turnbull. An assignment from Dot makes a player he has watched for years the subject of a very different kind of attention.

Living under a new name with his wife and daughter, Keller accepts an assignment involving a client's unfaithful wife. Identifying her lover requires investigation, putting the retired hit man into the unfamiliar role of detective.

An assignment to kill the abbot of a Murray Hill monastery brings Keller back to New York. Now living in New Orleans with a family, he must revisit a city tied closely to his former life.

Keller's assignment to kill a Detroit man overlaps with a San Francisco stamp auction both men plan to attend. Discovering a fellow collector in his target introduces an uncomfortable connection into the hit man's work.