Rating: 
Summary: Here's what the English press said about The Shot
Review: "The pick of the pre-Christmas hardback thriller offerings. Not since Oliver Stone's JFK has there been such a cleverly contrived reworking of the Kennedy assassination myth." THE TIMES "a brilliant thriller....cool, complex.... taut... well-paced...to read it is to be back in Havana and the US in 1960." THE OBSERVER "Riveting....as shocking as it is brilliant...Kerr's portrait of a morally corrupt society is so convincing that it leaves the reader wondering again about the actual assassination of Kennedy....as good as anything Kerr has written." THE MAIL ON SUNDAY " a shocking story of moral degeneration and sexual depravity" SCOTLAND ON SUNDAY "Fiction which reads like faction, with a plot which delivers brilliantly engineered surprises without pause or warning. Enough excitement to leave you feeling limp. A really terrific read" LITERARY REVIEW. "Clever and accomplished...often very funny indeed." SUNDAY TELEGRAPH "Mind boggling...Keeps you guessing until the end" SUNDAY EXPRESS "Britain's new state-of-the-art thriller writer, and you can see why from The Shot. It grips right from the opening line....Kerr keeps the plot twisting admirably through an intelligent if callous thriller...full of snappy dialogue and sharp detailing....Kerr's new novel certainly hits the spot." THE SUNDAY TIMES
Rating: 
Summary: Outstanding and riveting
Review: A professional hitman hired by the mob to kill Fidel Castro gets involved in more than he asked for. The hit is sponsored not only by the mob, but also by Kennedy who wants to become the president and then let the mob run the Cuban casinos. The mob possess a film of Kennedy's sexual adventures and thus all are tied-in in this game. When the hitman finds out that his wife also was Kennedy's lover, he takes things into his own hands and goes after kennedy. One of Kerr's best books.
Rating: 
Summary: About average for Kerr; he can do better
Review: At this point, I have read all of Philip Kerr's in-print works with the exception of the Berlin Noir trilogy (which I have but have not yet read). "The Shot" ranks about average among those works; it's pretty good but doesn't have either the deepness of thought exhibited by "A Philosophical Investigation" or the sheer energetic violence of "The Grid." The plot, such as can be described in a short review, has been adequately set forth in other reviews: essentially, the anti-hero, Tom Jefferson, is a former U.S. marine turned hitman who in 1960 accepts a contract from the Mob and the CIA to kill Cuban revolutionary Fidel Castro. That is, until he learns that President-elect Kennedy slept with his wife. All of a sudden, Jefferson is off to kill Kennedy, and the Mob is in the strange position of having to work to protect Kennedy, whom they helped to elect by rigging the election in exchange for calling off the government dogs. The fact that we know that Kennedy wasn't assassinated in 1960 actually doesn't affect one's enjoyment of the book, because Kerr does a good job of moving the plot along, and because his (for the most part) meticulous research about events in 1960 creates a feeling of verisimilitude. [Someone should tell Kerr that it's the Second Amendment, not the First Amendment, that allegedly guarantees the right to bear arms.] One gets the feeling that Kerr's spark for writing his novels is something along the lines of "What if . . ." So, we have: (1) What if we could identify a physical characteristic linked to serial killers ("A Philosophical Investigation"); (2) What if there was a building run by a psychopathic supercomputer ("The Grid"); (3) What if there was a supercontagious blood-borne virus for which there was a cure, but the rich purposefully rationed the cure ("The Second Angel"); (4) What if I [Philip Kerr] tried to write a novel like Elmore Leonard ("A Five-Year Plan"); and (5) What if I [Kerr] tried to write a novel like Michael Crichton ("Esau")? Along those lines, "The Shot" seems to have been inspired by two separate lines of thought: What if I [Kerr] tried to write a novel about an anti-hero like Patricia Highsmith's Tom Ripley; and what if I [Kerr] tried to write a Kennedy conspiracy novel? "The Shot" was compelling enough that I read the last 150 pages in a single sitting. But if you haven't read Kerr before, I would suggest starting with "A Philosophical Investigation" or "The Grid," depending on your sensibilities.
Rating:
Summary: About average for Kerr; he can do better
Review: At this point, I have read all of Philip Kerr's in-print works with the exception of the Berlin Noir trilogy (which I have but have not yet read). "The Shot" ranks about average among those works; it's pretty good but doesn't have either the deepness of thought exhibited by "A Philosophical Investigation" or the sheer energetic violence of "The Grid." The plot, such as can be described in a short review, has been adequately set forth in other reviews: essentially, the anti-hero, Tom Jefferson, is a former U.S. marine turned hitman who in 1960 accepts a contract from the Mob and the CIA to kill Cuban revolutionary Fidel Castro. That is, until he learns that President-elect Kennedy slept with his wife. All of a sudden, Jefferson is off to kill Kennedy, and the Mob is in the strange position of having to work to protect Kennedy, whom they helped to elect by rigging the election in exchange for calling off the government dogs. The fact that we know that Kennedy wasn't assassinated in 1960 actually doesn't affect one's enjoyment of the book, because Kerr does a good job of moving the plot along, and because his (for the most part) meticulous research about events in 1960 creates a feeling of verisimilitude. [Someone should tell Kerr that it's the Second Amendment, not the First Amendment, that allegedly guarantees the right to bear arms.] One gets the feeling that Kerr's spark for writing his novels is something along the lines of "What if . . ." So, we have: (1) What if we could identify a physical characteristic linked to serial killers ("A Philosophical Investigation"); (2) What if there was a building run by a psychopathic supercomputer ("The Grid"); (3) What if there was a supercontagious blood-borne virus for which there was a cure, but the rich purposefully rationed the cure ("The Second Angel"); (4) What if I [Philip Kerr] tried to write a novel like Elmore Leonard ("A Five-Year Plan"); and (5) What if I [Kerr] tried to write a novel like Michael Crichton ("Esau")? Along those lines, "The Shot" seems to have been inspired by two separate lines of thought: What if I [Kerr] tried to write a novel about an anti-hero like Patricia Highsmith's Tom Ripley; and what if I [Kerr] tried to write a Kennedy conspiracy novel? "The Shot" was compelling enough that I read the last 150 pages in a single sitting. But if you haven't read Kerr before, I would suggest starting with "A Philosophical Investigation" or "The Grid," depending on your sensibilities.
Rating:
Summary: Enjoyed immensely
Review: Contrary to some of the other reviewers here, I enjoyed this a great deal. It was an interesting concept, well executed. It really holds your attention, and while you might suspect it's another "what if" historical novel, it's not that at all. Revealing the ending would ruin the read, so I'll merely suggest that you read and enjoy. I would concur with others though who suggest The Shot is not up to his Berlin Noir trilogy. I think they may be the best detective novels of the century.
Rating: 
Summary: The Shot Misses
Review: Having been confined to a hospital room for the past week sans any good reading and also having inherited from a friend who doesn't know my literary tastes, what can best be said about "The Shot" by Philip Kerr, is what any one of the monotonic male characters might have said " ...more holes than an Emmentaler that went before afiring squad. An Emmentaler is one of those Swiss Cheeses that has holes in it because .. etc. etc. " Indeed, given the number of times Kerr steps aside to provide the reader with little known facts that have remained little known for a very good reason, sometimes reading this felt more like sitting in Cheers next to Cliff the postman than like reading a "thriller"! Now I confess the genre of spy/crime/detective thrillers is not my bag. So when fate cast me and "The Shot" together, I felt I should give it a chance, meet it on its own terms. I think I did and I think it is on the terms it fails and badly. First Kerr rolls out what ought to have been an intriguingly diverse array of shady lawmen, Mafiosi, and lone killers but they all speak in exactly the same voice, with the identical vernacular mannerisms and, more regrettably, the same unbelievable inconsistencies in the things they know, say and do. Character development? Not even fair to ask that, but it is fair to expect, well, characters, plural. I speak of the males -- all the women of course are stunningly gorgeous, with big chests but personalities flatter than the Mississippi delta. Second and worse is the plotting. Mind you, Kerr had a fine idea ,even a courageous one, given the fictional and, more so non- and semi fictional traffic that has trampled the paths of JFK's assassination. The premise is of a much earlier plan to hit Kennedy, even before his inauguration and one that seems to be very "personal", caused by the President's overly active (and overly discussed) sex life rather than individual psychopathology, ideology, organized crime, big unions or the military-industrial complex. Interesting, but... It's what Kerr does with this idea that becomes maddeningly misguided. We are taken into the mind of assassin, Tom Jefferson, who, we are supposed to believe is right up there with the Jackal himself in stealth and cunning. And yet, the dumb things he does and the equally dim actions of Jimmy Nimmo the supposedly equally wily cop tracking whose him , are rank amateurish. Example: the Mob-backed detective finds that an old military buddy of Jefferson's is in the gunsmithing business. Well guess who, out of all the gunsmiths you could call in America, Mr. Ingenious Assassin has called within the last week. Dumb? But wait up for Dumber. The detective confronts the guy and totures enough information ouit of him to pick up the assassin's trail. Now he has to decide what to do with the informant. He worries the choice loike its brain surgery - let the guy live and send a message to the assassin that he's been fingered? Or kill him and supposedly quiet the guy? But it never seems to occur to him that if he does the latter, when the assassin calls back for his order of specialty bullets, he might just get spooked anyway to find the guy dead.This is, alas, not the only case where everyone including the author forget that killing someone definitely leaves its own message trail. There are also period discrepancies, things thought about or said way back in 1960 that weren't common lingo for many years thereafter. . Examples: white people did not call each other "Bro'" in imitation of Afro-American vernacular back then. And I am quite sure that although gangsters often killed people from moving cars, these hits were not called "drive-bys" until the 80s. Or for some really bad semantic incongruity how about one rough and tumble hoodlum named "Mothballs" Manzani whose description of a suspect is "rough looking....unshaven. Very not Palm Beach" Very not Mafia! There are just too many of these slips. Each time you hit one you get thrown a 1000 feet from any willed "suspension of disbelief." If you must read this, perhaps best to have your seat belt fastened. Better yet, give this hit a miss.
Rating: 
Summary: When did Kerr lose his imagination?
Review: His latest effort is a poor combination of 'American Tabloid' and 'Libra'. Spent too much time demonstrating his knowledge of uninteresting 60's cultural details. The dialogue was flat, the characters heartless. Pointless.
Rating:
Summary: pretty good read
Review: i enjoyed the shot, although the ending was a let down.psfort sam houston is in san antonio, not dallas.
Rating:
Summary: Phony as a three-dollar-bill
Review: I had high hopes for this work because I really enjoyed Kerr's "Berlin Noir" trilogy, but I was very disappointed with "The Shot." The concept was interesting: A paid assassin is contracted to kill Castro, but changes targets when a pre-presidential JFK sleeps with his wife, who happens to be a campaign worker for JFK. The dialogue in the book, particularly the conversations of the gangsters, rings horribly false - more like privileged writers concepts of how gangsters talk. Page after page has that over-writerly feel, if you know what I mean. When a book is really good, you are not really conscious of the writer. In this book, you can practically sense Mr. Kerr patting himself on the back for another great line. The main character, a hit man named "Thomas Jefferson" comes off as an extremely labored, mannered creation. Compare this character with "The Jackal" in Fredrick Forsyth's book, and you will see what I mean. One seems extremely believable and real, one seems like a writer's concept of a killer. I don't normally pick details, but the whole book turned silly for me when the author had a character "thumb back the safety" on a Smith & Wesson .38 revolver. This is kind of a classic writer's blunder that I didn't think any writer could make anymore, what with the advent of quick Internet research, but apparently it still happens. Revolvers do not have safeties. This alone would not have tanked the book for me, though. It was just kind of indicative of the essential falseness of the work.
Rating:
Summary: Good twist on some old themes
Review: I really enjoyed this read. The Kennedy/CIA/FBI conspiracy and Cuba/Castro/CIA themes have been done so may times it was hard to pick up this book, however I was really glad I did. With great characters, good plot developement and some great twists in the plot I really didn't know what to expect at the end. I think the mix of very familiar history with fiction worked very well.
This is a great summer read!!!
I just wish the Brits would learn how to spell color and harbor (no "u") and words that end in ize (not ise) :)
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