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Reviewed by:
  • Boy Nobody by Allen Zadoff
  • Elizabeth Bush
Zadoff, Allen . Boy Nobody. Little, 2013. [352p]. ISBN 978-0-316-19968-1 $17.99 Reviewed from galleys R Gr. 9-12.

"Benjamin" has been working under an alias as an assassin for The Program, a shadowy arm of the American government, long enough to shake off any squeamishness [End Page 536] at taking a life. He's hurled into a situation he's not prepared for, however, with his current assignment: murdering New York mayor Jonathan Goldberg, father of beautiful classmate Samara, for whom Benjamin has fallen hard. He's on a tighter schedule than normal, too, with only five days to complete the task, and although ingratiating himself into the heavily guarded Goldberg apartment has been a cakewalk, he's become much too comfortable with the mayor himself, a wise and amiable man who's just the father figure Benjamin needs and wants. Benjamin passes up several opportunities to inject the mayor with undetectable poison, and perhaps that's for the best, since it's beginning to look as if Goldberg isn't the rightful target after all. Although this novel is closer to a '70s thriller than a '40s noir mystery, there's more than a touch of Sam Spade in the character of Benjamin, a street-toughened young man with a deeply buried moral compass and no compunction about sending the dame he loves up the river, or in this case, off to eternity. Zadoff leaves Benjamin with his true identity revealed, a hacker friend in the wings, and a line on his missing father. You can bet The Program's already working on his next assignment. [End Page 537]

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