This is *The Kills*: *Sutler*, *The Massive*, *The Kill*, *The Hit*.
*The Kills* is an epic novel of crime and conspiracy told in four books. It begins with a man on the run and ends with a burned body. Moving across continents, characters and genres, there will be no more ambitious or exciting novel in 2013.
In a ground-breaking collaboration between author and publisher, Richard House has also created multimedia content that takes you beyond the boundaries of the book and into the characters’ lives outside its pages.
### Plot Summary
Camp Liberty is an unmanned staging-post in Amrah province, Iraq; the place where the detritus of the war is buried, incinerated, removed from memory. Until, suddenly, plans are announced to transform it into the largest military base in the country, codenamed the Massive, with a post-war strategy to convert the site for civilian use.
Contracted by HOSCO, the insidious company responsible for overseeing the Massive, Rem Gunnersen finds himself unwittingly commanding a disparate group of economic mercenaries at Camp Liberty when the mysterious Stephen Lawrence Sutler arrives. As the men are played against each other by HOSCO the situation grows increasingly tense. And then everything changes. An explosion. An attack on a regional government office. When the dust settles it emerges that Sutler has disappeared, and over fifty million dollars of reconstruction funds are missing.
Sutler finds himself accused and on the run. Gunnersen and his men want revenge for months of abuse and misinformation. Out of the chaos a man named Paul Geezler rises to restore order, a man more involved than he’s willing to admit.
And then there’s the vicious murder of an American student in Italy. A murder that replicates exactly the details of a well-known novel.
### Reviews
‘*The Kills* is engrossing but also ferociously complex and demanding . . . [House] writes in startling detail about character, location and physical mannerisms . . . a very sophisticated yarn-spinner’ *Evening Standard*
‘Richard House has written a damn good book’ *Sunday Times*
‘A staggering achievement . . . Highly recommended’ *Daily Mail*
### About the Author
Richard House is an author, film maker, artist and university lecturer. As well as the digital-first novel *The Kills*, he has written two previous novels (*Bruiser* and *Uninvited*), which were published by Serpent’s Tail in the 1990s. He is a member of the Chicago-based collaborative Haha. He is the editor of a digital magazine, Fatboy Review: www.fatboyreview.net
**
### From Booklist
*Starred Review* War is hell. It’s also big business. And, in this remarkable, epic literary venture, a novel in four parts that was long-listed for the Man Booker Prize, House explores the collateral damage of our capitalist way of going to war. In “Sutler,” a civilian working in Southern Iraq under a false name, Sutler, for a Halliburton-like contractor (HOSCO) is told to disappear; he understands he’s being scapegoated for embezzlement but has no idea of the scale. In “The Massive,” at a site where HOSCO’s waste is burned with complete disregard for workers’ health, Sutler arrives to begin planning a city that will never be built. “The Kill” is a story about a student’s murder in Naples, told in multiple outsider viewpoints, the basis for a book within the book that recurs enigmatically throughout The Kills. And “The Hit” shows the endgame, as multiple sightings of Sutler confuse the embezzler’s attempts to contain the damage from the theft. Part Olen Steinhauer spy thriller and part Roberto Bolaño art novel, with a huge cast of characters, many Middle Eastern settings, and a puzzle of a time-shifting plot, The Kills is a work of intense artistic conviction and demands a serious commitment from its readers. They’ll be rewarded, even if the center of this dazzlingly large picture is elusive. After all, for men chasing money in the desert, perspective may just be another mirage. --Keir Graff
### Review
“A symphony in four distinct novel-length movements….Perfect for folks whose idea Thanksgiving or Christmas breaks involve curling up with a fat, rewarding read.” ―*Passport*
“*The Kills* challenges what a thriller can be…Despite the influence of Roberto Bolaño's *2666*, Sutler calls the protagonist of another open-ended epic to mind: Tyrone Slothrop of Thomas Pynchon's *Gravity's Rainbow*, a character who disappears from the book but whose presence can be felt on every page. *The Kills* has similar goals as *Gravity's Rainbow*: to expose the greed and corruption that thrives in the economy of war. House may not have written a conventional thriller, but *The Kills* is a thrilling work of art by a writer at the top of his game.” ―*Jim Ruland, Los Angeles Times*
“One-word review: Wow.” ―*Susannah Cahalan, New York Post*
“*The Kills* offers up all the suspense and violence of a thriller, but House's tetralogy is much more than an exciting story.” ―*Tulsa World*
“*The Kills* is in part a comprehensive, Tom Wolfe-esque plunge into the underworld of military contracting. It's also a shrewd, globe-trotting thriller in the vein of John le Carré...Reading it will make quick work of a cross-country flight or a weekend at the beach.” ―*Sam Sacks, The Wall Street Journal*
“A long read, and worth every minute....House's brilliant structure allows him to maintain maximum suspense while following his characters and ideas across a vast moral, political, and philosophical landscape. (The effect is not unlike Roberto Bolaño's in *2666*, an inspiration for *The Kills*.) The novel is ambitious, expansive, beautifully written, and gripping, with intimations of danger shimmering behind even the simplest gesture. Imagine Philip Petit walking a tightrope across the Grand Canyon. *The Kills *is that dazzling.” ―*NPR.org*
“Huge and hugely ambitious...House is one of the few British writers taking on the challenge of constructing a literary novel through the prism of a crime novel...House creates a surreal, Mesopotamian *Catch-22...The Kills, *with its ambition, linguistic stylization, and global reach, is exactly the kind of novel the Booker Prize (and the reading public) needs.” ―*Los Angeles Review of Books*
“The thousand-page novel you'll actually want to read...Richard House's THE KILLS comprises four separate novels--addictive, interlocking thrillers that echo the political intrigue of Graham Greene and the innovative structures of Roberto Bolaño....There's a summer's worth of white-knuckle page turning here, but you'll probably need only a week.” ―*Details*
“Criminally entertaining.” ―*Vanity Fair*
“*The Kills* is not a typical thriller, but it has the pace and energy associated with the genre and it's already being compared to the work of John le Carre....House has taken a familiar form and made it fresh....Richly detailed, evocative prose.” ―*Out*
“This is the kind of book that classics are made off.” ―*Amos Lassen, ReviewsByAmosLassen.com*
“*The Kills* is a hugely ambitious and mesmerizing work, fresh and entertaining. Richard House is the real deal.” ―*Olen Steinhauer, New York Times-bestselling author of The Tourist and An American Spy*
“This is a staggering achievement....Highly recommended.” ―*Daily Mail (London)*
“Remarkable...Part Olen Steinhauer spy thriller and part Roberto Bolaño art novel...*The Kills* is a work of intense artistic conviction and demands a serious commitment from its readers. They'll be rewarded.” ―*Booklist*
“Engrossing…House's four-part, 1,000-page novel of corruption and murder is a heady page-turner. Already a hit in the U.K., *The Kills* trots the globe with professional killers and military contractors, and earns its comparisons to John le Carré with a healthy dose of political intrigue.” ―*Matthew Love, Time Out New York*
“Richard House's ambitious espionage novel, inspired by Roberto Bolano's *2666* and Zola's *Les Rougon-Macquart*, is comprised of four tightly linked books….It all adds up to an astonishing saga.” ―*Jane Ciabattari, BBC.com*
“A sprawling, subterranean, sometimes-surreal novel of the new world order, longlisted for the Man Booker Prize, in which Bolaño and Pynchon wave in passing as we dodge between IEDs and sinister plots....Ambitious and often brilliant.” ―*Kirkus Reviews*
“*The Kills*...takes you on a hell of a ride.” ―*The Daily Telegraph (London)*
“*The Kills* by Richard House: The second section of this four-part novel is callexd 'The Massive'; it's a title that could have stood for the whole. House's sprawling quadruple-decker, longlisted for the Booker Prize, is a literary thriller set against the background of the Iraq War.” ―*Garth Risk Halberg, The Millions' Most Anticipated Books of 2014*
“Richard House has written a damn good book....*The Kills* is possibly the most eyebrow-raising entry on this year's Booker longlist....He is not your average novelist, but is also a filmmaker, artist, and magazine editor....If this all seems hifalutin, rest assured: *The Kills* is still all about spinning a good yarn.” ―*The Sunday Times (London)*
“A gigantic experiment, bracing, thrilling and worthy of a medal for narrative heroism, Richard House's four-volume *The Kills* plays an epic set of variations on the shadow war for loot and influence behind the chaos of Iraq.” ―*Boyd Tonkin, The Independent (London), Books of the Year*
“The novel I enjoyed most was Richard House's sensational pile-driver, *The Kills*.” ―*Philip Hensher, The Guardian (London), Best Books of the Year*
“Richard House's *The Kills *was the novel that impressed me most: a terrific unbuckled ride through global and intimate catastrophes, blood and billions.” ―*Philip Hensher, The Spectator (London), Best Books of the Year*
Description:
**LONGLISTED FOR THE MAN BOOKER PRIZE 2013.**
This is *The Kills*: *Sutler*, *The Massive*, *The Kill*, *The Hit*.
*The Kills* is an epic novel of crime and conspiracy told in four books. It begins with a man on the run and ends with a burned body. Moving across continents, characters and genres, there will be no more ambitious or exciting novel in 2013.
In a ground-breaking collaboration between author and publisher, Richard House has also created multimedia content that takes you beyond the boundaries of the book and into the characters’ lives outside its pages.
### Plot Summary
Camp Liberty is an unmanned staging-post in Amrah province, Iraq; the place where the detritus of the war is buried, incinerated, removed from memory. Until, suddenly, plans are announced to transform it into the largest military base in the country, codenamed the Massive, with a post-war strategy to convert the site for civilian use.
Contracted by HOSCO, the insidious company responsible for overseeing the Massive, Rem Gunnersen finds himself unwittingly commanding a disparate group of economic mercenaries at Camp Liberty when the mysterious Stephen Lawrence Sutler arrives. As the men are played against each other by HOSCO the situation grows increasingly tense. And then everything changes. An explosion. An attack on a regional government office. When the dust settles it emerges that Sutler has disappeared, and over fifty million dollars of reconstruction funds are missing.
Sutler finds himself accused and on the run. Gunnersen and his men want revenge for months of abuse and misinformation. Out of the chaos a man named Paul Geezler rises to restore order, a man more involved than he’s willing to admit.
And then there’s the vicious murder of an American student in Italy. A murder that replicates exactly the details of a well-known novel.
### Reviews
‘*The Kills* is engrossing but also ferociously complex and demanding . . . [House] writes in startling detail about character, location and physical mannerisms . . . a very sophisticated yarn-spinner’ *Evening Standard*
‘Richard House has written a damn good book’ *Sunday Times*
‘A staggering achievement . . . Highly recommended’ *Daily Mail*
### About the Author
Richard House is an author, film maker, artist and university lecturer. As well as the digital-first novel *The Kills*, he has written two previous novels (*Bruiser* and *Uninvited*), which were published by Serpent’s Tail in the 1990s. He is a member of the Chicago-based collaborative Haha. He is the editor of a digital magazine, Fatboy Review: www.fatboyreview.net
**
### From Booklist
*Starred Review* War is hell. It’s also big business. And, in this remarkable, epic literary venture, a novel in four parts that was long-listed for the Man Booker Prize, House explores the collateral damage of our capitalist way of going to war. In “Sutler,” a civilian working in Southern Iraq under a false name, Sutler, for a Halliburton-like contractor (HOSCO) is told to disappear; he understands he’s being scapegoated for embezzlement but has no idea of the scale. In “The Massive,” at a site where HOSCO’s waste is burned with complete disregard for workers’ health, Sutler arrives to begin planning a city that will never be built. “The Kill” is a story about a student’s murder in Naples, told in multiple outsider viewpoints, the basis for a book within the book that recurs enigmatically throughout The Kills. And “The Hit” shows the endgame, as multiple sightings of Sutler confuse the embezzler’s attempts to contain the damage from the theft. Part Olen Steinhauer spy thriller and part Roberto Bolaño art novel, with a huge cast of characters, many Middle Eastern settings, and a puzzle of a time-shifting plot, The Kills is a work of intense artistic conviction and demands a serious commitment from its readers. They’ll be rewarded, even if the center of this dazzlingly large picture is elusive. After all, for men chasing money in the desert, perspective may just be another mirage. --Keir Graff
### Review
“A symphony in four distinct novel-length movements….Perfect for folks whose idea Thanksgiving or Christmas breaks involve curling up with a fat, rewarding read.” ―*Passport*
“*The Kills* challenges what a thriller can be…Despite the influence of Roberto Bolaño's *2666*, Sutler calls the protagonist of another open-ended epic to mind: Tyrone Slothrop of Thomas Pynchon's *Gravity's Rainbow*, a character who disappears from the book but whose presence can be felt on every page. *The Kills* has similar goals as *Gravity's Rainbow*: to expose the greed and corruption that thrives in the economy of war. House may not have written a conventional thriller, but *The Kills* is a thrilling work of art by a writer at the top of his game.” ―*Jim Ruland, Los Angeles Times*
“One-word review: Wow.” ―*Susannah Cahalan, New York Post*
“*The Kills* offers up all the suspense and violence of a thriller, but House's tetralogy is much more than an exciting story.” ―*Tulsa World*
“*The Kills* is in part a comprehensive, Tom Wolfe-esque plunge into the underworld of military contracting. It's also a shrewd, globe-trotting thriller in the vein of John le Carré...Reading it will make quick work of a cross-country flight or a weekend at the beach.” ―*Sam Sacks, The Wall Street Journal*
“A long read, and worth every minute....House's brilliant structure allows him to maintain maximum suspense while following his characters and ideas across a vast moral, political, and philosophical landscape. (The effect is not unlike Roberto Bolaño's in *2666*, an inspiration for *The Kills*.) The novel is ambitious, expansive, beautifully written, and gripping, with intimations of danger shimmering behind even the simplest gesture. Imagine Philip Petit walking a tightrope across the Grand Canyon. *The Kills *is that dazzling.” ―*NPR.org*
“Huge and hugely ambitious...House is one of the few British writers taking on the challenge of constructing a literary novel through the prism of a crime novel...House creates a surreal, Mesopotamian *Catch-22...The Kills, *with its ambition, linguistic stylization, and global reach, is exactly the kind of novel the Booker Prize (and the reading public) needs.” ―*Los Angeles Review of Books*
“The thousand-page novel you'll actually want to read...Richard House's THE KILLS comprises four separate novels--addictive, interlocking thrillers that echo the political intrigue of Graham Greene and the innovative structures of Roberto Bolaño....There's a summer's worth of white-knuckle page turning here, but you'll probably need only a week.” ―*Details*
“Criminally entertaining.” ―*Vanity Fair*
“*The Kills* is not a typical thriller, but it has the pace and energy associated with the genre and it's already being compared to the work of John le Carre....House has taken a familiar form and made it fresh....Richly detailed, evocative prose.” ―*Out*
“This is the kind of book that classics are made off.” ―*Amos Lassen, ReviewsByAmosLassen.com*
“*The Kills* is a hugely ambitious and mesmerizing work, fresh and entertaining. Richard House is the real deal.” ―*Olen Steinhauer, New York Times-bestselling author of The Tourist and An American Spy*
“This is a staggering achievement....Highly recommended.” ―*Daily Mail (London)*
“Remarkable...Part Olen Steinhauer spy thriller and part Roberto Bolaño art novel...*The Kills* is a work of intense artistic conviction and demands a serious commitment from its readers. They'll be rewarded.” ―*Booklist*
“Engrossing…House's four-part, 1,000-page novel of corruption and murder is a heady page-turner. Already a hit in the U.K., *The Kills* trots the globe with professional killers and military contractors, and earns its comparisons to John le Carré with a healthy dose of political intrigue.” ―*Matthew Love, Time Out New York*
“Richard House's ambitious espionage novel, inspired by Roberto Bolano's *2666* and Zola's *Les Rougon-Macquart*, is comprised of four tightly linked books….It all adds up to an astonishing saga.” ―*Jane Ciabattari, BBC.com*
“A sprawling, subterranean, sometimes-surreal novel of the new world order, longlisted for the Man Booker Prize, in which Bolaño and Pynchon wave in passing as we dodge between IEDs and sinister plots....Ambitious and often brilliant.” ―*Kirkus Reviews*
“*The Kills*...takes you on a hell of a ride.” ―*The Daily Telegraph (London)*
“*The Kills* by Richard House: The second section of this four-part novel is callexd 'The Massive'; it's a title that could have stood for the whole. House's sprawling quadruple-decker, longlisted for the Booker Prize, is a literary thriller set against the background of the Iraq War.” ―*Garth Risk Halberg, The Millions' Most Anticipated Books of 2014*
“Richard House has written a damn good book....*The Kills* is possibly the most eyebrow-raising entry on this year's Booker longlist....He is not your average novelist, but is also a filmmaker, artist, and magazine editor....If this all seems hifalutin, rest assured: *The Kills* is still all about spinning a good yarn.” ―*The Sunday Times (London)*
“A gigantic experiment, bracing, thrilling and worthy of a medal for narrative heroism, Richard House's four-volume *The Kills* plays an epic set of variations on the shadow war for loot and influence behind the chaos of Iraq.” ―*Boyd Tonkin, The Independent (London), Books of the Year*
“The novel I enjoyed most was Richard House's sensational pile-driver, *The Kills*.” ―*Philip Hensher, The Guardian (London), Best Books of the Year*
“Richard House's *The Kills *was the novel that impressed me most: a terrific unbuckled ride through global and intimate catastrophes, blood and billions.” ―*Philip Hensher, The Spectator (London), Best Books of the Year*