The Silver Bear

Screenwriter Haas's debut features a darkly compelling narrator. When a young hit man who refers to himself as Columbus learns his next job is to assassinate presidential candidate Abe Mann, Columbus is not taken aback so much by Mann's national prominence as he is by the key role Mann once played in Columbus's past. Soon Columbus realizes that those behind the plot appear to be setting somebody else up as well—himself. The suspense builds as Columbus goes about his business, all the while detailing his accomplishments, his acuity, his nerve, his intelligence. Then he does something so unlikely that the reader immediately realizes that whatever the author intended, this is a narrator too unreliable to listen to, much less trust. Still, those looking for a downbeat political fable during the current election season may be satisfied.