Laukkanen Dances with the One What Brung Him: Reviewing "Kill Fee"

Kill Fee - Owen Laukkanen

Kirk Stevens of Minnesota's BCA and Carla Windermere of the FBI had figured they’d just share a cuppa and catch up on each other’s cases, but their coffee break went out the window when the two watched in horror as a sniper murdered a white-haired old man before their very eyes. Bad luck for the killer, though – Windermere got a good look at the blank-eyed young man and his getaway ride. The trail seemed to die there, though – the man who suposedly rented the little blue car in Minneapolis looked nothing like the killer and he swore he’d been driving a red SUV. So much for police work…

When the dead man’s cousin turned up dead a few days later in Duluth, Stevens caught the case – and that’s where he first ran across the cryptic word “Killswitch.” Stevens being a pretty bright guy figured out he was on the trail of a contract killer. That brought the Feds – and therefore Windermere – into the game. Yay.



The man behind Killswitch soon realizes that the federales are on his trail, but arrogance and the lure of big bucks keep him at it. He does decide he needs a new “asset” to do the actual work, but that should be no problem – there’s a nearly endless supply of candidates out there. What he doesn’t count on, however, is the synergy generated by Stevens and Windermere. It’s only a matter of time…

After a killer debut novel (The Professionals) and a somewhat less shining follow-up (Criminal Enterprise), one-time poker correspondent Owen Laukkanen brings his mismatched team back in Kill Fee. While the structure of the three novels is similar – the point of view switches among villain, Stevens and Windermere – the plot of Kill Fee has a striking difference from the first two novels: unlike the villains of the first two, who drifted into a life of crime, the man behind Killswitch is essentially evil on a stick. There’s no way readers find him likeable, though the asset “Richard O’Brien” is much more sympathetic; by now a Laukkanen trademark.

Other Laukkanen trademarks are equally visible, like the self-deprecating humor and the contrast between Stevens' and Windermere's personal lives. As in the two previous novels, Laukkanen manages pacing with aplomb and builds characters that his readers can like; a departure from so many other young novelists whose purpose seems to be to be as outrageous as possible.

Another positive; unlike so many television cops in the 21st century, Laukkanen’s mismatched duo still depends on old-fashioned legwork and gut feelings to get the job done. There’s no gas spectrometry or photomicrography involved in these police procedurals, just good police work and a little luck. Those who want to be reminded that Sherlock Holmes could identify soil samples from any neighborhood in London should look to Jefferey Deaver’s Lincoln Rhyme series – Stevens and Windermere are defiantly old-school.

That doesn’t mean Windermere and Stevens don’t use Google and smartphones, that just means they rely as much on their brains as on technology. Owen Laukkanen most assuredly makes this work for his cop team. Oh, sure, the sexual tension angle is a bit overworked and the coincidence of the two witnessing a murder on page one stretches things a little, as does the third time the two cops from totally different jurisdictions get teamed up, but on Kill Fee's last page Laukkanen manages to get that last issue cleared up. Now, if he can just realize that a man and a woman working together don’t always end up in lust…