The Gunseller -- Hugh Laurie

I don't watch House very often, but I do know that Hugh Laurie's the star. He's also a darned good writer if The Gunseller is any evidence. It's fast-moving, funny, and thoroughly entertaining.

The narrator is Thomas Lang, and when he's asked to kill an American millionaire, he refuses the job and informs the man of the plot against him. No good deed goes unpunished, and before Lang is absorbing more punishment than you'd think possible. He even lands in the hospital a couple of times, though his ability to recover rivals that of the immortal cheerleader on Heroes. He also finds himself at the center of a highly convoluted plot that I won't even try to summarize here. Let's just say that things blow up real good, that people are shot (or not), and that hardly anyone is what he (or she) appears to be.

This is great fun all the way through, and be sure to turn the next-to-last page for the final two-line kicker, which is fully in keeping with the cynicism of the rest of the novel.