The assiduously inventive thriller writer offers his second book about the professional hitman Keller. Hit List's best twist is that Keller, in the course of his duties, discovers that someone has put a hit out on him. As in his superlative novels featuring private eye Matthew Scudder, Lawrence Block offers up protagonists who are authoritative and wily yet flawed; in this one, Keller begins having panic attacks, a potentially deadly inconvenience for a guy in his line of work. In the earlier Hit Man, Keller was cool and detached to the point of being almost boring (and too reminiscent of Donald E. Westlake's lone op Parker). Here, Keller's case of nerves, along with a snuffed romance, lends his hard-boiled amorality some poignance and grace. B+
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