Robbie McNeil's Hit List by Brianna Heath (2026)
It's never easy when you're stuck with competing, divided opinions about a book......delighted with all the stuff in it you like and frustrated and perplexed by all the things that most definitely left you cold.
So it was with this book, which swings back and forth between charming, witty and twisty enough in its plot.....but carries with it a cruel amoral undertone even as it tirelessly generates and begs for sympathy for its characters..
Which is why, for the first time, I find myself having to round a 3 star review upward to 3..5. because I do not feel comfortable giving 'Robbie' a full 4 stars.
First off, if we're to believe novelists and screenwriters of thrillers, the number of killers-for-hire running around far exceeds that of healthcare , food service and government employees. No wonder I can't find a doctor and have to wait so long for my fries.......they've all switched to more profitable careers of bumping off people.
And that brings us to Robbie McNeil and Dee Machado, a queerplatonic couple who own and operate a popular lesbian Karaoke bar.......as well as accept lucrative contracts to eliminate people whom other people have decided should push up daisies. Dee's an quick, efficient sniper on his assignments while Robbie painstakingly stalks her potential victims so as to arrange meticulous 'accidental' deaths.
Robbie's latest dead-man-walking, an elusive, mysterious young fellow, manages to simply disappear on her. And this puts Robbie in the unforgiving crosshairs of the equally mysterious (and extra creepy) guy who hired her for the kill. This alarming development comes just as Robbie and Dee are trying to mount their amateur Broadway-style musical in a huge historic theater graciously rented to them by a wealthy politician-powerbroker. And wouldn't you know it.......the tangled, twisted backstory of Robbie's missing hit-target crosses paths with all the crisis-a-day, show-bizzy chaos of putting on a musical.
Robbie and Dee are presented to us as a loving, sharp-witted ride-or=die duo, so I guess we're supposed to root for them and not give too much thought to their resume strewn with dead bodies. (You see my problem here.). Also, the pacing of the book goes slack and inert for long stretches, with the narrative coasting on its charm and attempts at dark gallows humor.. But I did enjoy the grand finale, which to me played almost like a spoof of a cornball, feel-good 1930's musical. Well, yeah.....it was fun and made me feel good.
A mixed bag, indeed......so I'm sticking with the 3 & 1/2 stars. (***1/2).
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