Review: Problems of a driven, ethical assassin
Rating: 5 out of 5
Date: 09 20, 2013
On the surface, Lucky's Charm by Jenn Nixon is a story about a professional assassin, albeit one with ethics.  It is more.  The protagonist, Lucky, is a complex character.  The book is at least as much about her inner conflicts, ethical and otherwise, as it is about her job.Among the multiple reasons for her becoming a paid killer is a desire to find the person who murdered her mother and take revenge.  Perhaps it isn't the most noble of motivations, a fact she accepts, but it drives her nonetheless.Complications she faces include her concerns about her uncle and cousin.  They work with the same network of assassins she does, but as handlers, coordinators, and researchers, not as killers.  She worries about them as much as they worry about her.  Her uncle is as determined to find the person who killed Lucky's mother as she is, but would also like to see Lucky and his daughter find a way to lead more normal lives.Her already complicated life becomes more complex when she encounters and falls in love with Ken, another assassin working for her network.  She tries not to become involved with him, attempting, as she has in the past, to limit her emotional involvement to her uncle and cousin.  She fails.The constant background as she follows clues leading to the identity of the man who killed her mother is her work as she assassinates one target after another.  Although the situation and methods vary widely from victim to victim, some readers might find the series of murders a bit repetitive.  Against this, every job she does tells the reader a little more about Lucky and what's going on in her head.By the end of the book things seem to come together for Lucky.  Her relationship with her lover is deepening.  In some ways she seems to finding the normalcy her uncle wants for her and she wants for herself.  She seems to be closing in on the person she's looking for, even having a name for the person who might be the man who murdered her mother.  Eliminating the killer she's spent years looking for might be enough to let her retire as an assassin, or at least move into a position allowing her to kill less often.In the novel, as in real life, things are never easy.  She makes an understandable error resulting in someone, probably the person she's looking for, attempting to kill her.  The would-be assassin fails, but wounds her uncle in the process.Unfortunately or not, depending on the reader's feelings, the book is part of a series and doesn't actually end.  Instead it stops at what will be the start of the next book in the series.  This is not ideal for a person who wants each book to be self-contained, but for those willing to look at a series as a whole and don't insist on each book standing completely alone it should not be a problem.With the last proviso one the individual reader must take into account, this is a book I would recommend to anyone who likes a well-structured novel with an interesting prot