The cold killers of fiction have an endlessly sinister appeal. Rueful assassins, rogue assassins, the wisecracking, the laconic, the licensed to kill. The variety of screen, game and literary killers attests to a fascination that would feel absolutely wrong if it were not laced with a seductive permission to indulge.
When it comes to real-world assassinations, though, we like to think we respond more appropriately, whatever our sympathies with the killer’s motivation or with the dark pragmatism of state-sanctioned violence. We are horrified when assassination is deployed with no possible legitimacy but often grimly accepting of its necessity, in the case of Osama bin Laden, say.
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