Who is Conrad Hirst? | Kevin Wignall

Who is Conrad Hirst?
by Kevin Wignall
Pub: Simon & Schuster
227 pages

Conrad Hirst is a killer, utterly remorseless and disconnected from the world, working for a crime boss with ruthless efficiency. Until his last job. For some reason, the old man Conrad was sent to kill affected him. Unsure why Hirst none the less decides it is time to get out of the business and start rediscovering his humanity. If he's right, then it's just the matter of four more deaths.


Of course it was never going to be that simple and nothing in Conrad's life is what he thought it was as he slowly begins to discover. It doens't help that his decision either coincides with or set in motion a whole set of events that are now becoming focussed around him.

The detachment Hirst feels is translated to the reader as a calm acceptance. Yes he wants to survive, to get out, but he's unnaccustomed to anxiety, fear, empathy, so the reader is also slightly at arms length from those things, feeling a little more tension only when Conrad begins to experience more emotionally. Interestingly this is every bit as effective in drawing you in, making you want to know what happens as the more obvious manipulation of tying you emotionally to the lead.


There's a compelling fascination to this character, to his coldness and his niavity, to the strange morality he later displays. He's still young so his life may be salvagable and the letters that are scattered between some of the chapters, to Annekke offer a glimpse at an alternate future, who he could have been had events not gone as they did.


There are no other leads as such in the book, it's very much Conrad's story, although some of the characters play significant roles in Conrad's attempts to reconnect with himself.

I loved this book, there is something wonderfully refreshing about Conrad's practicality, his choices and his unapologetic view of killing, all beautifully reflected in the writing. Really excellent book in the spy genre.