The Intern's handbook

276 pages

English language

Published June 4, 2014

ISBN:: 978-1-4767-3380-7
OCLC Number:: 852226514

(3 reviews)

"John Lago is an intern at one of the biggest law firms in Manhattan. He clocks eighty hours a week getting coffee, answering phones, and doing all of the shit work no one else wants to do ... and he doesn't make a dime. But John isn't trying to claw his way to the top of the corporate food chain. He was hired to assassinate one of the firm's high profile, heavily guarded partners. His internship is the perfect cover--enabling him to gather intel and secure the access he needs to execute a clean, untraceable kill. A cinematic (and psychopathic) thriller, The Intern's Handbook is John Lago's unofficial survival guide for new recruits at Human Resources, Inc.--John's real employer and a front for one of the most elite assassin training and "placement" programs in the world. What starts as a handbook becomes a darkly comic memoir in which John chronicles …

"John Lago is an intern at one of the biggest law firms in Manhattan. He clocks eighty hours a week getting coffee, answering phones, and doing all of the shit work no one else wants to do ... and he doesn't make a dime. But John isn't trying to claw his way to the top of the corporate food chain. He was hired to assassinate one of the firm's high profile, heavily guarded partners. His internship is the perfect cover--enabling him to gather intel and secure the access he needs to execute a clean, untraceable kill. A cinematic (and psychopathic) thriller, The Intern's Handbook is John Lago's unofficial survival guide for new recruits at Human Resources, Inc.--John's real employer and a front for one of the most elite assassin training and "placement" programs in the world. What starts as a handbook becomes a darkly comic memoir in which John chronicles his final assignment and takes the reader on a twisted, violent thrill ride in which he is pitted against the strongest adversary he has ever faced--Alice, a federal agent assigned to investigate the same law firm partner John's been hired to kill. In juxtaposition to John's blood-soaked bravado are FBI surveillance transcripts in which he unwittingly exposes the deep scars from his horrific childhood, longs to connect with his true family, and, through Alice, hopes that love will help him find redemption from the body count that haunts his past and threatens his future"--

1 edition

jayvall reviewed The Intern's handbook by Shane Kuhn

Review of "The Intern's handbook" on 'Goodreads'

2 stars

Not as much of a thriller as I expected it to be. Maybe to me thriller means heart pounding, and suspenseful. This was more just gory with a little suspense. Suspense isn't even the right word. Action. It was action-filled and bloody. If that's a thriller, fine, but it isn't in my mind. As for the story, I found the narrator breaking the 4th wall off putting at first but then I got used to it. There was a section towards the end though that I found very frustrating and poorly edited. The premise of the book is that the narrator is writing a guide for new interns, and he intersperses a tale about his last job with the guide. Which is fine. But 3/4ths of the way through, he says, "Here's where the guide ends, the rest of this book is going to be like a memoir." Which is …

Not as much of a thriller as I expected it to be. Maybe to me thriller means heart pounding, and suspenseful. This was more just gory with a little suspense. Suspense isn't even the right word. Action. It was action-filled and bloody. If that's a thriller, fine, but it isn't in my mind. As for the story, I found the narrator breaking the 4th wall off putting at first but then I got used to it. There was a section towards the end though that I found very frustrating and poorly edited. The premise of the book is that the narrator is writing a guide for new interns, and he intersperses a tale about his last job with the guide. Which is fine. But 3/4ths of the way through, he says, "Here's where the guide ends, the rest of this book is going to be like a memoir." Which is still fine. What is not fine is the following 3 pages that recaps plot points THAT WE JUST READ. DID THE AUTHOR THINK I FORGOT THESE THINGS HAPPENED 100 PAGES AGO? DO I REALLY NEED TO BE REMINDED ABOUT THINGS THAT HAPPENED IN THE SAME FUCKING BOOK? Maybe it's a problem based in the format of the book: handbook turned memoir. But seriously, no one on Shane Kuhn's editing team said, "Hey maybe we don't need this part?" No one?

Despite the above rant, I didn't dislike this. It was super easy to read and breeze through. If it wasn't for all the "fuck"s I'd think 8-th graders could read it. Apparently Kuhn is a B-movie screenwriter (according to the NY Daily News) and this reads like a B-movie book, so I guess he wrote what he knew. I'm not sure I would read more from Kuhn but it wasn't bad for a first effort.

unsquare

rated it

Dec. 22, 2017

Shahnoor

rated it

April 1, 2014

Subjects

Impersonation
Assassins
FICTION
Fiction
Internship programs
Suspense
Thrillers
General
Law firms