How much would your family stump up for your ransom?

‘I can’t quite believe I’m here, having a steak dinner with a killer,’ writes Jenny Kleeman, as she sits with a hitman for the big opening to her book about the price we put on life. Someone paid to take lives is about to spill the beans on his dark trade. There should be tension. There should be jeopardy. We should be worried about Kleeman’s safety. So why does it feel a bit flat?

It is difficult to find a hired gun, obviously. This one is John Alite, who was ‘a hitman for the Gambino dynasty’. However, he is now ‘a motivational speaker’ and ‘host of several podcasts’, and seems a lot more podcaster than hitman. Kleeman writes that he went to prison after he ‘pleaded guilty to charges that included two murders’. But when he talks about his sentence, she says ‘some of his numbers don’t stack up’. She also says it ‘would be naive to take this former gangster at his word’. We get no satisfactory price for a hit. He tells her he ‘probably shot 40 men’, but didn’t keep track of how many died. The steak dinner is not a success.

The next chapter frustrates too. Kleeman visits an F-35 factory in Texas to meet the publicist, take a tour and speak to some of the workers. From my experience, good stories rarely come from such visits. She uses the section to debate the cost of the planes, but that has been done elsewhere at length. She tries to dig into missions on which the fighter jets have been used, wondering who they have killed. Unfortunately, we don’t get close to knowing names or their stories. If I’d been editing this book, I’d have ditched these opening pieces.

But when Kleeman tells the story of a London mother whose son was stabbed, she gets the access and time to tell it properly: the knock at the door; the police; the poor mother wetting herself as she tries to get dressed; the prayers.