Book Review: The Assassination Bureau, Ltd. by Jack London and Robert L Fish

I picked this book up strictly from the back copy. I don’t normally read about assassins but the potential twists and turns sounded fun. I expected something like Ludlum’s Bourne thrillers where the protagonist is on the run, fighting off other assassins and wins at the end of the day.

That isn’t quite what I got.

Summary

Ivan Dragomiloff is the focal character of the story, while Winter Hall (age 32) is the actual protagonist. “Grunya” (age 22) is Dragomiloff’s niece, to whom he is devoted and treats like a daughter. Hall starts off as a character I wasn’t sure I was supposed to like, but I did and I was right to like him. He’s honest, true to his word, sticks to his principles, and is deeply loyal to the people he cares about. Hall and Dragomiloff enter a battle of philosophy and ethics, which concludes with Dragomiloff becoming the target of his own assassination enterprise. Horrified, Hall does everything he can to stop the “game”, as Dragomiloff refers to it, but is bound by his word and principle to help the Assassination Bureau hunt down and kill its founder within one year. Dragomiloff takes a liking to Hall and leaves him temporarily in charge of the organization, and his niece; both men are stunned to find out that they are connected to each other through Grunya - she wants to marry Hall, and Hall wants her uncle’s permission first.

What ensues is a chaotic series of correspondence from cities across America as Dragomiloff systematically hunts down and kills the assassins who work for him, while avoiding their traps and keeping one step ahead of everyone. Short truces are had, in which the surviving members of the organization meet with Dragomiloff and discuss ways of killing him and the philosophies of death and purging society of unnecessary scum. Dragomiloff is reluctant to kill his friends but takes solace in the fact that they are ambivalent to death. Grunya learns the truth about her uncle - not only is he the founder of the Assassination Bureau but his is also her biological father pretending to be her uncle - and follows him across America in the hopes to dissuade him from his crazy scheme. Although given her father’s blessing to marry Hall, she refuses until the contract runs out at the end of one year and Dragomiloff will be free of the hit. As the assassins dwindle and the clock runs out, Dragomiloff gets restless and is faced with the decision to live or die by his word.

Thoughts

All in all, I enjoyed the story. I was reading quickly, while tired, so I know I missed much of the finer details of the ethical dilemma put forward by the author. London never figured out how he wanted to finish the book and put it aside indefinitely. Consequently, the ending was finished after his death by Robert L Fish with the aid of London’s outline, plot and character notes. The copy of the book I read included those notes, which was fascinating. Fish’s ending was different from London’s notes. I didn’t care for either ending, to be honest. Both ended with Dragomiloff dead - London’s notes having the assassins get him, and Fish’s with his honorable suicide on a matter of principle.

Death is presented as the inevitable and their humanity was not to be feared. The assassins knew they would die if they failed any of their hits, and the hit on Dragomiloff was no different. They cared only that their families were provided for, to which Hall, as temporary head of the organization, willingly obliged. The death count is high, with every member of the Assassination Bureau being killed (twenty named members). Only Grunya and Hall are outside the terms of the contract and survive. Despite all of the men in the organization being good friends who genuinely like and admire each other, their devotion to the intellectual purity of social ethics override the sanctity of human life.

The story brings to mind the words of Solomon from the first chapter of Ecclesiastes (ESV):

8 All things are full of weariness;
a man cannot utter it;
the eye is not satisfied with seeing,
nor the ear filled with hearing.
9 What has been is what will be,
and what has been done is what will be done,
and there is nothing new under the sun.