SHORTLISTED FOR THE CWA DAGGER FOR CRIME FICTION IN TRANSLATION 2024
'It's a clever book ... [Im Seong-sun] offers readers his razor-sharp observations on consumer capitalism and what it means to feel anonymous' M. W. Craven
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Sometimes work can be murder...
The Consultant is very good at his job. He creates simple, elegant, effective solutions for... restructuring. Nothing obvious or messy. Certainly nothing anyone would ever suspect as murder.
The 'natural deaths' he plans have always gone well: a medicine replaced here, a mechanism jammed there. His performance reviews are excellent. And it's not as though he knows these people.
Until his next 'customer' turns out to be someone he not only knows but cares about, and for the first time, he begins to question the role he plays in the vast, anonymous Company. And as he slowly starts to understand the real scope of their work, he realises just how easy it would befor the Company to arrange one more perfect murder...
But how far will he go to escape The Company? And how far will they go to stop him?
The electrifying novel from award-winning Korean thriller-writer Im Seong-sun - now in English for the first time - combines the tension of the best crime fiction with sharp social criticism in this searing take-down of global corporate life.
'It's a clever book ... [Im Seong-sun] offers readers his razor-sharp observations on consumer capitalism and what it means to feel anonymous' M. W. Craven
-------------------
Sometimes work can be murder...
The Consultant is very good at his job. He creates simple, elegant, effective solutions for... restructuring. Nothing obvious or messy. Certainly nothing anyone would ever suspect as murder.
The 'natural deaths' he plans have always gone well: a medicine replaced here, a mechanism jammed there. His performance reviews are excellent. And it's not as though he knows these people.
Until his next 'customer' turns out to be someone he not only knows but cares about, and for the first time, he begins to question the role he plays in the vast, anonymous Company. And as he slowly starts to understand the real scope of their work, he realises just how easy it would befor the Company to arrange one more perfect murder...
But how far will he go to escape The Company? And how far will they go to stop him?
The electrifying novel from award-winning Korean thriller-writer Im Seong-sun - now in English for the first time - combines the tension of the best crime fiction with sharp social criticism in this searing take-down of global corporate life.
An intriguing premise, cleverly executed, makes for a brilliant read. For The Consultant, a killer who never meets his victims, it all starts to go wrong when he's told to kill someone he knows. Darkly funny, with a fascinating protagonist, it's excellent! Guy Morpuss, author of Five Minds and Black Lake Manor