Preview of Killshot Summary:

In Killshot, Leonard transcends mere crime fiction with his domestic and onthe-job interludes. What emerges is the belief that the ironworkers and their families have a stability deriving from their membership in a group, and that vital to the social units of work and home are trust and interdependence. In contrast, Degas and Nix are loners who never have had continuing ties, personal or otherwise. Although they become partners early in the book, live together for a while, and even share the same woman, theirs is a relationship of convenience; they neither trust nor respect one another. The partnership ends as it began, with one man pointing a gun at the other.

To an extent, then, the novel celebrates the family and the traditional work ethic, as well as man as a social being. An aging Mafia don is the first person Degas murders in Killshot, slain at...