The Silver Bear

"The intense psychological portrait of a hitman--the anti-Jason Bourne--as he stalks his prey from Boston to LA. He wants you to know him, maybe even admire him, but only for his excellence in his craft. Perhaps he was even born for it. ""A natural killer,"" his mentor--a middleman named Vespucci--said he was. He proved it with his first professional hit: a Fifth Circuit Court judge in Boston, executed with a sheet of Saran Wrap in the stairwell of her own courthouse. He's proved his merit often, usually with a Glock semiautomatic, but he's improvised too, with his bare hands, the heel of a shoe, knives, even a sewing machine. He is the consummate assassin, at the top of his form, immune to the psychological strains of his chosen profession. He is what the Russians call a Silver Bear. He calls himself Columbus. It's the name Vespucci gave him, ten years ago, when he discovered a dark, new world of fences, clients, marks, jobs, jack. Not that his real name meant much to him anyway. He never knew his father or his mother, a prostitute who became dangerously involved back in the seventies with an earnest young congressman named Abe Mann, then a rising star in the Democratic Party. The magnetic Abe Mann has since become the Speaker of the House. He is currently running for the Democratic nomination in an exhausting presidential campaign, weaving his way across the country. Columbus is not far behind. But as he pieces together his past and prepares the seamless assassination of his mark, the criminal underworld he has always ruled begins unraveling violently around him."

A hitman isn't allowed to have a life...

He calls himself Columbus. Some call him the Silver Bear. All know him as one of the deadliest assassins in the world.

Now, as he tracks a powerful politician with presidential aspirations, the fragmented pieces of his own life begin to point to a terrible truth that will unmake everything he is, tear apart the shadowy, criminal world he rules-and put him right in the crosshairs.

The Barnes & Noble Review

How does a young writer get his first thriller published with a bang these days? First, you coauthor a sharp remake of a classic western movie, 3:10 to Yuma, the 2007 version starring Russell Crowe and Christian Bale. Next, you come up with a concept so high that it might give publishers and readers a nosebleed: An ace hit man hired (no spoiler here: it's in the book jacket copy) to kill his own father. Then you do such a good job of bringing this high concept to life that early readers compare it favorably to Graham Greene, Lawrence Block, Richard Condon's The Manchurian Candidate, and Frederick Forsyth's The Day of the Jackal. The Silver Bear -- which is what the Russians call a world-class hit man -- is almost as good as they say it is. Sure, there are five or ten too many flashbacks to old cases or to childhood mistreatment and retribution, but some of them (like the time the killer, known as Columbus, murders a federal judge with Saran Wrap) have great power. And a lot of Columbus's inner dialogue, though beautifully crafted, is also frequently pretentious. I spin with a whirl part tornado and part grace, and before an inhale can become an exhale, I have a pistol up and raised in my hand... Haas, who seems to have a Columbus series in mind, has another job to finish first -- the screenplay of The Materese Circle, by another suspense explorer and pioneer named Robert Ludlum. --Dick Adler

"He wants you to know him, maybe even admire him, but only for his excellence in his craft. Perhaps he was even born for it. "A natural killer," his mentor - a middleman named Vespucci - said he was. He proved it with his first professional hit: a Fifth Circuit Court judge in Boston, executed with a sheet of Saran Wrap in the stairwell of her own courthouse. He's proved his merit often, usually with a Glock semiautomatic, but he's improvised too, with his bare hands, the heel of a shoe, knives, even a sewing machine. He is the consummate assassin, at the top of his form, immune to the psychological strains of his chosen profession. He is what the Russians call a Silver Bear." "He calls himself Columbus. It's the name Vespucci gave him ten years ago, when he discovered a dark, new world of fences, clients, marks, jobs, jack. Not that his real name meant much to him anyways. He never knew his father or his mother, a prostitute who became dangerously involved back in the seventies with an earnest young congressman named Abe Mann, then a rising star in the Democratic Party." "The magnetic Abe Mann has since become Speaker of the House. Currently a front-runner for the Democratic nomination in an exhausting presidential campaign, he's weaving his way across the country - with Columbus not far behind. But as the Silver Bear closes in on perhaps his most important mark, the underworld he has always ruled abruptly turns against him."--Jacket Professional assassin Columbus becomes a formidable underworld ruler through a series of creative hits before targeting a presidential candidate with whom Columbus's prostitute mother had been involved