"The Intern's Handbook" by Shane Kuhn - Literary Lemonade?

The Intern's Handbook - Shane Kuhn

Ann Landers (or maybe it was Dear Abby – same difference) was fond of saying, “If life hands you lemons, make lemonade.” Shane Kuhn takes this advice to heart for The Intern’s Handbook. The particular lemon with which the screenwriter must deal for this, his first novel, is the lack of a plot – or more properly, the lack of a novel-length plot. The lemonade? Kuhn turns his extended short story into a comic farce by dressing it up as a combination employee handbook and memoir, which allows him to insert all the fun bits he’s thought up without needing to form a coherent narrative.

That lemonade thing? It works… kinda.


Meet “John Lago,” twenty-something serial intern. Not only is he a serial intern, he’s also a serial killer: his real job is infiltrating a bad guy's company as an intern and then offing his target; preferably in a manner that fits the dead guy’s crimes against humanity. Oh, yeah, Lago “only” kills people who deserve it (by virtue of being filthy rich in many cases). 

In his last job – once he hits twenty-five, it gets hard to sell the whole intern shtick – Lago signs on with a NYC law firm in hopes of identifying which senior partner’s been selling the new identities of people in Witness Protection. He falls in with a rough crowd, however; in thr person of the beautiful and sexy Alice… who has a few secrets of her own. “Lago” intersperses bits of advice for new recruits to his employer (HR, Inc.) with a blow-by-blow description of the manner in which he worms his way into range of his target – or who he thinks is his target. What he doesn’t know, however, is that John Lago is not the puppeteer in this little caper – he’s the puppet.

Shane Kuhn is identified in his author bio as a screenwriter, but anyone could have figured that out without even looking based on his incessant use of film references (right down to a chapter name or two, e.g., “The Perks of Being a Wallflower”). As is common with film buffs, such a social tic eventually becomes insufferable – in this case, somewhere about chapter six. There are also enough pop-culture references to ensure that the novel won’t have any staying power, but who cares about that.

At a spare 276 pages, Kuhn’s little story would barely make it as a novella without the padding created by frequent insertion of flashbacks to previous jobs under the guise of “advice.” Fortunately, many of these little vignettes are macabre enough to be funny, especially since Lago is quite… inventive when it comes to doing his job. It doesn't hurt that he’s as deadly as a SEAL, a Delta Force commando, a Green Beret, and a ninja all rolled into one compact package. All that and smart as hell, too. HR, Inc. will lose quite an asset when John retires.

Kuhn's plot, unfortunately, runs out of gas and so he's forced to throw in a muddled ending that also requires the same kind of willing suspension of disbelief the original “Mission Impossible” (the TV show) required. That would be the ability to precisely predict what someone will do once your plot is set in motion; only in this case the prediction has to be carried out more than a decade in advance. Sorry, it doesn’t work…


For its fairly inventive plotting device and wry sense of humor, The Intern's Handbook earns four stars, albeit somewhat begrudgingly. I see no problem, however, with removing a star for the clunky manner in which Kuhn closed out the plot. 

Note to self: I should've noticed that the blurbs on the jacket are all by people I've either never heard of or whose books I haven't liked...