The Killers

This story was very good, but very strange at the same time. The way the Al and Max spoke was similar to that in-your-face witty way that European actors talk in movies. The mystery as to why Ole Anderson was doomed to be killed, and how Nick and George tried to help him reminded me of some Sherlock Holmes stories I have read in the past. Obviously “The Killers” is about 50 years older than the debut of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s sleuth, but the British dialect instantly made that connection for me.
Aside from that, I really enjoyed the short story. The title gave it away that Al and Max were up to no good after their first lines. I feel like maybe a situation like that could have arisen in the 1920’s. A guy gets involved with the wrong crowd and upsets someone, so he gets a hit on him. Even the fact that George was held up for a few hours by a couple of dark strangers in big coats is believable for that time period.
The characters, Al and Max were also very interesting. I knew they had bad motives from the beginning of the story, and they acted like they had done it a million times. They were rude, but professional, and also pretty funny, in a demented way. Normally, repeated insults like, “bright boy” would annoy me, but I’ve always been fond of mobster movies and books. You never know what a wiseguy is up to, and the unpredictability really attracts me. George was the coward, but I was half-expecting Nick Adams to be some sort of hero, not just an average guy with good morals. The fact that Hemmingway made him just a regular guy made the story much more believable and authentic.