K-LIT REVIEW 'Mrs. Shim is a Killer' offers deep cuts

The cover of "Mrs. Shim is a Killer" by Kang Jiyoung / Courtesy of Transworld

Brooding films with assassin protagonists are a tired trend, but Kang Jiyoung’s "Mrs. Shim is a Killer" cuts away the stereotypes to get at the heart of the genre.

The titular character is a 51-year-old former butcher looking for a new line of work. A widowed mother short of modern skills, Mrs. Shim unexpectedly finds the strange and cutthroat world of murder-for-hire that has plenty of use for someone experienced with knives when she answers a job ad in the newspaper for the Smile Detective Agency.

“You can wash your hands clean when you’re dead,” a fortune teller advises, summing up the colorful collection of malcontents who make up the novel’s cast of characters. Most of them arise like Mrs. Shim from humble origins, doing anything they can to survive and prosper in a rough-and-tumble world of economic desperation.

The author enchants with a delicately woven series of overlapping plotlines that both surprise and entertain, while also bringing in interesting and relatively obscure facets of Korea’s culture, such as ghost weddings and fortune telling.

Most chapters are told from the perspective of the characters — sometimes family members, sometimes victims, sometimes hitmen at the Happy Detective Agency or its competitors. Some characters are given backstories that reveal childhood traumas, while others have few motivations beyond the ever-present need for money and success. Many of the individual stories reveal threads that come together in a pattern centered on Mrs. Shim. Everyone is connected, and reading slowly is paramount to enjoying the resulting tapestry.

Chapters jump back and forth in time, meetings between characters are retold from new perspectives, and connections between characters are slowly explained, making for a satisfying experience as the reader puts together clues.

In a country where personal sidearms are almost nonexistent, death is usually dealt out with edged weapons, changing the narrative around assasination. Knifework happens up close, and that means becoming close to the victim. A knife requires intimacy, and the exploration of intimacy is a major theme as Mrs. Shim uses her status as an older and ostensibly harmless woman to befriend targets.

When the moment of violence happens — and it happens often — the result is messy. Blood appears in every way imaginable, chapter after chapter, from births and deaths, from violence and labor. The intergenerational persistence of poverty is passed through blood. Is guilt as well? What would someone do for their family?

"Any person can kill another person," says one of the murderers-for-hire. People kill for revenge, for attention and for money. People kill friends and enemies, children and spouses, strangers and themselves. Death haunts every page of this novel, but the author conveys a respect for death despite the way it is dealt out

Like gamblers who desperately increase the stakes as they lose more and more, as the novel goes on the killers’ plans become more reckless as they converge toward a bloody conclusion.

"Mrs. Shim is a Killer" is an enjoyable and thrilling read, with genuine surprises as the story comes together. Perhaps it isn’t a coincidence that it takes some of the traits of a killer to enjoy it properly: patience, pragmatism and a strong stomach.

The book is available through dbbooks.co.kr.

Arlo Matisz is an economics professor at Chosun University in Gwangju.