Mrs. Shim Is a Killer

Mrs. Shim needs money. She has lost her husband and her job, and there are three mouths to feed at her kitchen table; if she doesn't find work soon, she and her children will lose their home. So when she answers a vague ad for the Smile Detective Agency, she assumes it's a cleaning position — until the interview consists entirely of questions about her years as a butcher and what she can do with a cleaver. They want a very different kind of cleaning.

Too frightened to refuse, Mrs. Shim takes the job, and finds that killing is not so different from butchery. She rises quickly to become the agency's finest contract killer, but her talent draws envy from rivals and colleagues alike, and soon the knives are pointed at her.

Told through a rotating cast of perspectives, Kang Jiyoung's Korean bestseller is a pitch-black comedy about invisibility, economic desperation, and a very unlikely assassin.