Lit Review: Mrs Shim is a Killer

Mrs Shim is a Killer, the first of Kang Jiyoung's novels to be translated into English, is a highly entertaining and darkly humorous story of an ahjumma who is forced to take up murder as a calling due to her straitened circumstances. A single mother with two university-bound kids, Mrs Shim lives a desperate life following the death of her philandering husband. Saddled with debts, and with Korean society being the way it is, the loss of her job at the butcher's puts her in a desperate position. Unemployed with few options but with a practiced knife hand, she finds herself responding to a help wanted ad in a magazine seeking housewives over the age of 40. 

That's the book's hook in a nutshell: an auntie who becomes one of the best hitmen in Korea. But if that were the only draw of the book, Mrs Shim is a Killer would hardly stand out from a dozen other recent translations from Japan and Korea featuring a zany cast of eccentric killers. Surprisingly, for a book about the world of hitmen and problem solvers, there's hardly any depiction of killing in the book. Instead, Jiyoung spends most of the book developing her characters and the twisty knots that tie their backgrounds and fates together. Interweaving flashbacks with first-person narratives from the various cast members, Jiyoung creates a more textured tale than a book with such a blatant adjectival title would suggest. 

Jiyoung also subtly weaves in elements of social critique--enough to give pause to the reader without losing its propulsive pacing. Korea can be a difficult place if you're not in society's upper echelons--think of the premise of most K-dramas vs that of Parasite. The country's current status as a technological and entertainment powerhouse hides the fact that it was only relatively recently that it became a developed nation. As with all societies where lines of morality and justice are typically drawn along class lines, Mrs Shim portrays a society where the wealthy, more often than not, get away with their trespasses.   

The fact that almost every character in her book lives or has had a hard-scrabble life makes them more sympathetic--including Mrs Shim's victims. In fact, it almost makes one wonder if all of them really deserved to die for their trespasses, some of which really seem to not be deserving of capital punishment. Make no mistake though: this is not supposed to be a realistic depiction of the world; some suspension of disbelief is required to fully enjoy the book, and it is a thoroughly enjoyable one. 

'I did something bad again today. There was this guy who abandoned his parents overseas, then came back and spent up what was left of their assets. But it wasn't his parents who ordered the hit. It was his business partner. Anyway, I bought some marsh clams. I thought they'd be good for a soup.'

Mrs Shim is a Killer is publishing in April 2026 by Doubleday. Thanks to Times Reads for an advanced review copy of this book.