As "Killer" opens, Leonard March is one of the most hated men in Boston. Arrested for murder, Leonard cut a deal to inform on a mob boss. Assured of a lenient sentence, Leonard confessed to carrying out 18 contract killings.

Now, 14 years later, he's out of prison, and the media have made sure everyone knows his name and face.

Leonard takes a job as a night janitor and tries to piece together what is left of his life. His wife is dead, but he still hopes to reconnect with his estranged son and daughters. The gangsters he sold out, though, have no intentions of making amends, and neither do the families of his victims.

As his situation grows more oppressive, Leonard finds potential respite in Sophie Duval. Sophie, younger but hard-bitten, wants to help Leonard write his autobiography-- whether he likes it or not. When he agrees to join her in the mountains to work on the book, Leonard comes face to face with some horrifying truths.

In his latest novel about a man just out of prison, following "Small Crimes" and "Pariah," Dave Zeltserman displays a genius for capturing the brute facts of survival "on the outside." Leonard is disarmingly sympathetic, which makes the novel's surprise conclusion even more disturbing.