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Stephen White has taken on some tough philosophical issues in KILL ME and he's managed to wind them into a tight, mesmerizing crime novel. KILL ME places White's series protagonist, psychotherapist Alan Gregory, in the background in order to tell the first-person story of one of his patients. Our narrator for almost the entire book is a nameless self-described rich white guy who is happily married, a doting father, medical technology wizard and an extreme sports enthusiast. While skiing in the Canadian Rockies, our narrator has a serious accident that seems for a few harrowing moments to have left him paralyzed. As he lies in the snow unable to move, he begs his adventure-loving buddies to kill him if he doesn't recover from his injuries. Life diminished by profound disability seems to him, at the time, to be a fate far worse than death. He makes a full and remarkable recovery, but another member of the group has a diving accident that plunges him into a persistent vegetative state. Our narrator contemplates these two events and concludes that he cannot imagine living a life circumscribed by disability, nor does he want his family to be burdened by such an event. Jimmy Lee, a family friend and adventure group member who recently lost his wife to cancer, lets our narrator know about an organization that sells death insurance. That is, for a large fee, the organization will murder the policy holder once certain client-specified physical parameters have been breached. After some thought and negotiation, our narrator signs up for the plan, which costs several millions dollars and is non-revocable. Soon our narrator's life takes several unexpected turns. A son he never knew he had appears on his doorstep and our narrator and his family fall in love with the boy. At the same time, our narrator discovers that he has a severe, inoperable brain aneurysm that is getting progressively worse. Though the criteria he set up for his 'death insurance' to take effect have been met and he knows that the people he calls the Death Angels are likely to kill him at any time, our narrator doesn't want to die until he can make peace with his son. The action of the story revolves around our narrator out-witting the very people he hired at great expense to kill him. In White's capable hands, this story jumps to life with an immediacy and tension that captivated me. This unique book explores the question we all ask ourselves sooner or later: "If there was no hope, when would you want your loved ones to pull the plug?" White takes on these provocative physical, psychological and philosophical issues with a deft hand. There is no predictable meditation on death or assisted suicide. Whatever you think about these issues before you read this book, chances are pretty good you'll have a slightly different perspective on them by the time you're finished. There are more twists and turns in this plot than you'd find on an alpine autobahn. The writing is pitch-perfect, the characters so human that you expect to meet them on the street and the action so unrelenting that you won't be able to sleep until you've turned the last page. KILL ME is a dazzling accomplishment by a rock-solid writer. As I write this 2006 hasn't even begun, but I'm dead certain that KILL ME is one of the very best of this, or any, year. Don't miss it.
Reviewed by Carroll Johnson, December 2006
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Contact: Yvonne Klein (ymk@reviewingtheevidence.com)
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