Smith -- Timothy J. Lockhart

There's no way to talk about this book without giving away something that the author doesn't want you to know in the first chapter, but that's okay.  The cover gives it away, too.

The story opens with Smith killing a man who's having fun in a hot tub.  She thinks she's gotten away clean, but she's picked up by members of a shadowy government group known as The Enterprise, whose job is assassinations, and they want Smith to join.  She has no real choice, so she does.

Following that we see her training, her first job, which goes okay, and her second, which goes badly wrong.  Along the way we find out more about her background, about why she killed the man in the hot tub, about her past.  She becomes more human and develops a relationship.

All this might seem pretty standard, but it's done well, and it didn't give me any idea of where the book was headed.  The final job and its results surprised me, although maybe they shouldn't have.  

It's good to see Stark House taking a chance on original fiction.  I love the reprints, but it's fun to meet new writers with interesting books.  Check it out.