He had lived a life without being aware of species loyalty, partly because at no time after he was fifteen had he been confident of living for long.

The hero of Eddie’s Boy by Thomas Perry calls himself Michael Schaeffer, but that’s not his real name. As a teenager, he was adopted by a man named Eddie, a butcher. It turned out Eddie was a butcher in more ways than one – he carried on a profitable sideline as a professional killer for organized crime. Eddie began teaching Michael that trade, discovering that the boy had a natural gift for it. He’s a born fighter and marksman. After Eddie was gone, Michael did well as a freelancer, killing bad men for the highest bidder, until one gangster double-crossed him. Michael matter-of-factly set that wise guy up for a murder rap, then left the country. Now he’s happily married to a British noblewoman.

Except that, from time to time, somebody recognizes his face. The word gets back to the U.S., and somebody comes to kill Michael. Then he has to take care of business.

In this fourth installment in the Butcher’s Boy series, men have shown up at Michael’s English home, to kill him and his wife. He handles them, but his wife persuades him to try disappearing instead of retaliating, just this once. He tries getting lost in Australia, but that doesn’t work out. He’ll have to go back to the states, find out who wants him dead, and neutralize them as usual. He has a simple, straightforward method of investigation – he kills men, then studies the reactions of others.

Eddie’s Boy was a well-written book. It kept me fascinated, and moved right along. But I was uneasy with it. When I was younger, I got a lot of vicarious pleasure out of stories about remorseless killers. In my old age, I’ve grown more scrupulous. And I’ve come to believe that no one except a sociopath (see last night’s review) can kill a human without suffering some kind of trauma. So the character of Michael Schaeffer seems a little unrealistic to me.

But the story’s great. Cautions for mature content.