In Chap­ter 54 of We Solve Mur­ders, Rob Ken­na reflects on the com­plex­i­ties of his cho­sen pro­fes­sion with­in the mur­der busi­ness. As he pre­pares to send Eddie Flood to Dublin for anoth­er high-stakes assign­ment, Rob con­sid­ers the grav­i­ty of his tar­get, Amy Wheel­er, and the neces­si­ty of hir­ing a skilled assas­sin rather than an aver­age one. Rob’s pre­vi­ous expe­ri­ences have taught him that sub­tle­ty and exper­tise are essen­tial when deal­ing with sen­si­tive mat­ters, and he rec­og­nizes that han­dling Amy’s case requires the utmost pre­ci­sion. Rob knows that his suc­cess hinges on select­ing the right indi­vid­u­als for each job, as the con­se­quences of fail­ure in his line of work are severe. The stakes are always high in this busi­ness, and Rob’s care­ful con­sid­er­a­tion of each move demon­strates the lev­el of respon­si­bil­i­ty he feels as he orches­trates these dan­ger­ous tasks.

Rob’s rela­tion­ship with Eddie is root­ed in their shared past in East Lon­don and Soho, where they both carved out their careers in their own ways. While Eddie is cer­tain­ly capa­ble of car­ry­ing out assign­ments, he has nev­er shared Rob’s dri­ve for more wealth or suc­cess. Eddie’s con­tent­ment with his lot in life con­trasts sharply with Rob’s insa­tiable desire for pow­er, wealth, and influ­ence. This diver­gence in ambi­tions reflects the dif­fer­ent moti­va­tions that dri­ve peo­ple, from those seek­ing to amass for­tune to those who are sim­ply sat­is­fied with the life they have. Rob’s reflec­tions on Eddie’s lack of ambi­tion make him think about his own relent­less pur­suit of suc­cess and whether there is any lim­it to his desires. His golf part­ner, Big Mick, also chal­lenges Rob’s per­spec­tive on suc­cess. Mick, who has made a com­fort­able liv­ing, finds sat­is­fac­tion in the sim­ple things in life, rais­ing ques­tions in Rob’s mind about whether his own ambi­tions are tru­ly ful­fill­ing or if they are dri­ven by some­thing deep­er, like the need for exter­nal val­i­da­tion.

As their con­ver­sa­tion con­tin­ues, Rob is prompt­ed to reflect on ambi­tion, hap­pi­ness, and the dif­fer­ing val­ues between him­self and oth­ers around him. Mick shares that his upbring­ing, shaped by strong women, taught him the val­ues of hard work and resilience, and he is con­tent with the suc­cess he has achieved. This per­spec­tive stands in stark con­trast to Rob’s unyield­ing quest for wealth and sta­tus, which is large­ly moti­vat­ed by his father’s high expec­ta­tions and his own desire to prove him­self. Rob’s intro­spec­tion high­lights the inter­nal con­flict between want­i­ng more and being unable to find con­tent­ment in what he has. While Mick finds ful­fill­ment in sim­pler joys, Rob is always search­ing for the next big thing, nev­er quite sat­is­fied. This dif­fer­ence in out­look makes Rob ques­tion whether his pur­suit of wealth will ever lead to the hap­pi­ness he craves, or if it will always be an elu­sive goal that keeps him chas­ing the next deal or busi­ness oppor­tu­ni­ty.

While they con­tin­ue their golf game, Rob receives a mes­sage from Nel­son Nunez, which presents a busi­ness propo­si­tion linked to a dia­mond con­fer­ence in Dubai. The oppor­tu­ni­ty for sig­nif­i­cant finan­cial gain excites Rob, as he believes that mon­ey is the key to hap­pi­ness and suc­cess. This belief under­scores Rob’s world­view and his relent­less pur­suit of wealth as a means of achiev­ing per­son­al sat­is­fac­tion. Unlike Eddie and Mick, who seem to find con­tent­ment with what they have, Rob sees finan­cial suc­cess as the ulti­mate mea­sure of his worth. This phi­los­o­phy guides every deci­sion he makes, dri­ving him to take on dan­ger­ous jobs and alliances that promise great rewards. As the chap­ter pro­gress­es, it becomes evi­dent that Rob’s ambi­tion is both his great­est strength and his biggest flaw, shap­ing the tra­jec­to­ry of his life. The peo­ple he inter­acts with, such as Nel­son and François Lou­bet, con­tin­ue to play piv­otal roles in his jour­ney, push­ing him for­ward in his unceas­ing quest for pow­er and suc­cess. This chap­ter explores the nature of ambi­tion, high­light­ing the con­trast between those who tire­less­ly chase their dreams and those who have found con­tent­ment in their real­i­ty.