Poul Anderson liked action scenes and what could be more active than an assassination attempt? Posing as a uniformed employee of her conurb, a professional hitman gains entry to Yvonne's apartment and points a gun at her but then acts unprofessionally, offering her time to pray and continuing the conversation. She drops her robe and offers him sex. He continues to talk, asking if she is crazy instead of just shooting her. She invites him to the bedroom but then runs into the kitchen and, when he follows, throws a boiling saucepan into his face, after which she grabs his dropped gun, presses it into his stomach and squeezes the trigger repeatedly until the gun is empty.
"'A pity you killed him,' [Almeida] said." (VII, p. 61) (later)
It did not have to happen like that. We could have been informed of a failed assassination attempt without the action in the kitchen but, as I said, I think that Anderson liked action scenes which he inherited from pulp fiction.
6 comments:
Readers like hairbreadth escapes and fights too. They're engaging at an elemental level.
Kaor, Paul!
While I agree with what Stirling said, you were right, a truly professional hit man would not have wasted time talking to Yvonne, he would have shot her at once.
Ad astra! Sean
Sean: true.
But would a man with a sense of professional ethics have become a hitman? 8-).
The real reason people use hitmen is that the hitman comes into town, kills and then -leaves-. As a ganglord once said, hitmen have the same virtue as hookers: you pay them, and they go away afterwards.
That's what makes it so difficult for the police to identify hitmen.
The overwhelming majority of murder cases that are solved are solved because there's an identifiable link of some sort between killer and victim.
Forensic evidence (fingerprints, DNA) usually -supplements- this approach, confirming it after the killer has been identified. Contrary to a lot of crime fiction, it's not usually the leading way of identification.
But it's hellishly difficult to identify a killer who is -not- linked to the victim in some way, particularly if the killer takes even elementary precautions -- wearing gloves, using the weapon only once and then untraceably ditching it(*), etc.
Incidentally, if the hitman in Poul's story -had- had sex with the victim, it would make identification much easier... though at the time, DNA tracing hadn't yet come in.
(*) by tossing the gun into deep seawater after a while in a dish of bleach, for example.
People note that convicts in jail tend to be stupid. That's not because criminals in general are necessarily stupid, it's because stupid ones are much, much more likely to get caught...
Kaor, Mr. Stirling!
I agree with all these comments. It's very, very hard for police detectives to trace a murderer who takes the precautions you cited or has no obvious ties to the victim. Yes, many murder cases are closed due to the killer being among the relatives, friends, and associates of the victim.
Ad astra! Sean
A guy I knew was murdered in Lancaster recently and the police have caught no one.
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