Robbie McNeil’s Hit List

Heath’s inventive debut centers on a charming contract killer who gets pulled into a dangerous job. Robbie McNeil has settled down in a “worn-out” Indiana city, where she runs a karaoke bar with her best friend and roommate, Dee Machado. The two are also hit women; Robbie—who’s been carrying out hits for 11 years to pay the bills—specializes in making her murders appear accidental. She dreams of staging an original musical, the expense of which leads her to accept a lucrative job offer despite her misgivings when the client provides scant details about the target. Robbie learns only that she’s supposed to find and kill Xavier Landerman, which she soon discovers is a fake name. As she pulls at the thread of who Xavier might be and who might want him dead, she fears she may finally be in over her head. Wry prose (“Robbie McNeil did not kill a single person for the first eighteen years of her life. After that, available records weren’t quite as clear”) and a fair-play but hard-to-solve mystery make this sing. Admirers of Rob Hart’s Assassins Anonymous will be impressed. Agent: Jenna Satterthwaite, Storm Literary. (Mar.)