Tag: assassin

Codename: Villanelle vs. Killing Eve

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Credit: Entertainment Weekly

“You are an evolutionary necessity.”

With the second series of Killing Eve starting this month, and one of our most eagerly anticipated TV shows of the year, it seems a good point to take a look back at Luke Jennings’s original source material, and its translation to the small screen. Codename: Villanelle was originally self-published by Jennings as four separate novellas, the first (with the same name) appearing in February 2014. It was followed by Villanelle: Hollowpoint in August, then Villanelle: Shanghai and Odessa in February and June of the following year.

It wasn’t Jennings’s first published work: far from it, with Atlantic appearing back in 1995. These were mostly what Jennings calls “politely received but unprofitable novels,” adding “Our income was, to say the least, patchy.” That probably explains why he was dance critic at The Observer newspaper for 14 years. Which in turn explains the entry in his bibliography which stands out as most un-Villanelle like: his co-authorship of The Faber Pocket Guide to Ballet…

Codename: Villanelle was optioned for the screen relatively quickly after the first novella, in spring 2014. Initially pitched to Sky Living, they turned the project down, but it was reworked by writer Phoebe Waller-Bridge, to put more emphasis on Eve, and these modifications also triggered the title change. It was a wise decision, I think. Codename: Villanelle seems very passive, a label given to a character (and half-meaningless unless you’re an expert on French perfume). Killing Eve is considerably more active, and also reflects the shift in focus from the hunter to the hunted. It helped get the show picked up by BBC America, and in autumn 2016, the show was given the go-ahead for an eight episode first series. But such was the advance buzz, that a second series was commissioned before even the first episode was broadcast.

This proved to be a wise decision. For it became a word-of-mouth hit, with ratings increasing by two-thirds from the first episode to the last. Critical reaction was no less enthusiastic: Killing Eve was included in more TV writers’ top tens for 2018, than any other show. Sandra Oh’s performance as Eve was particularly lauded, and she won the Golden Globe, Screen Actors’ Guild and Critics’ Choice Television Awards for her portrayal. The success of the series helped propel the first book onto the best-seller lists, and allowed Jennings to quit his day job at The Observer. The second volume, No Tomorrow, was published in October; we’ll have a review of that up later in the week.

But for now, we’re concentrating on the first book – and in particular, comparing and contrasting the show with its source material. What are the similarities? And, perhaps more interestingly, what are the differences? [Of necessity, what follows include significant spoilers for both TV and literary incarnations]

Villanelle

“They had recognized her talent, sought her out and taken her from the lowest place in the world to the highest, where she belonged. A predator, an instrument of evolution, one of that elite to whom no moral law applied. Inside her, this knowledge bloomed like a great dark rose, filling every cavity of her being.”

As noted above, the book leans considerably more towards Villanelle than the TV series in balancing the characters. In the show, she is initially a blank slate, and only slowly is her background revealed, as Eve peels back the layers behind her fake persona. The novel, however, fills in the basic details by page 13, while Eve doesn’t even appear until almost a quarter of the way in. Villanelle is a convicted triple-murderer, having taken revenge on the criminals responsible for killing her father – just one of a number of incidents that illustrate her socio/psychopathic nature [let’s not get bogged down in labels]. In the TV series, it’s a less family-oriented crime which gets her put away: castrating and murdering the husband of a teacher/lover.

She is then spirited out of prison by a shadowy group, known as “The Twelve” and trained in a range of lethal arts, becoming an assassin employed by them. “Shadowy” is putting it mildly for the TV version. Entirely opaque is probably closer to the truth, since we know almost nothing about them. The novel, in contrast, opens with a depiction of their meeting, and The Twelve deciding to unleash Villanelle on a target. We still don’t know who they are or their goals, however. They clearly don’t mess around though. While Konstantin, Villanelle’s handler, is in an “is he dead or not?” limbo at the end of season one, there’s no such doubt in the book. He’s 100% dead, killed by Villanelle after he has been rescued by her from kidnapping – just in case he divulged any incriminating information. Guess you never know. That’s considerably more brutal than in the show, where Konstantin does indeed “go rogue”.

The Vilannelle we see is considerably more anti-social than in the book, where she is entirely capable of hanging out with people as and when necessary. The version on the page is considerably more sexual too – likely impacted  by the TV show being on basic cable – with a habit, after completing an assassination, of finding some random stranger – male or female, she’s not bothered – for a meaningless fling. For her, it’s all about making them want her, and the resulting power she has over them. [There’s also a rather gratuitous scene, describing in unnecessary detail the unpleasant sexual fetish of one victim]

Eve Polastri

“Eve Polastri is looking down at Lambeth Bridge and the wind-blurred surface of the river. It’s 4 p.m. and she has just learned, with mixed feelings, that she is not pregnant.”

Even on the most superficial level, the small-screen version of Eve is radically different. In the book, she’s British and aged 29. The change in nationality was something BBC America required. Given their audience, it’s somewhat understandable, despite the resulting, somewhat clumsy need to explain why a Yankee is working for the British security services. That Sandra Oh is two decades older than the original Eve diminishes the suggestion in the novel that Eve and Villanelle are two sides of the same coin. Both are professional, childless women who have turned to their work, to the exclusion of almost everything else. Instead, the generation gap creates other echoes, almost a mother/delinquent daughter relationship.

Despite her youth, book Polastri has risen to become the head of her department at MI-5, which arranges special protection for visitors to the UK who are deemed at risk. She’s already intrigued by the whispers of Villanelle she has found, but this becomes a full obsession after the assassin takes out a Russian fringe politician on Eve’s turf, causing the civil servant to lose her position. Both versions then have Eve being recruited for an off-book operation to hunt Villanelle down, cutting ties with her previous colleagues.

This brings tension to Eve’s marriage with Niko, though much more so on television. In the book, while they still have their disagreements when Eve puts work before previously-arranged social engagements, there is a reconciliation (of sorts) towards the end. Niko and his academic pals help Eve crack a USB password, the device containing information that leads to an operative associated with The Twelve inside MI-5. Their marriage is certainly in a far better place at the end of volume one, than series one.

Eve vs. Villanelle

“She knows who I am. Killing Simon was a message, addressed to me. She was saying I can take you, and the people you care about, any fucking time I want…”

It’s at the nexus of the two main characters, in their relationship, that the TV series and book diverge most drastically. Because, in the novel, there pretty much isn’t one. Eve and Villanelle have virtually no conscious interaction at all. Emphasis on conscious, since the most time they spend together is when the killer slips into the spy’s Shanghai hotel room while Eve is sleeping and “inhales her warm smell.” What there is, is strictly adversarial: Eve regards Villanelle solely as a threat who must be stopped. “It’s just beginning,” are the three words from Eve with which the first book ends, as she puts a Glock 19 pistol in her bag. There’s little doubting her intentions.

What Phoebe Waller-Smith did in the show, was broaden and deepen that relationship, in a myriad of ways, both little and big. It feels more like Clarice Sterling and Hannibal Lecter in Silence of the Lambs, with a charming psychopath playing games against a dogged, somewhat dour bloodhound. By deepening the discord between Eve + Niko, and her overall discontent with life, and playing up Villanelle’s bisexuality, the TV show has added a slab of unresolved sexual tension between the pair, which simply wasn’t present in the first book. It has certainly helped make the show become a firm favourite in the gay community, though thanks to the wonderful performances of Oh and Jodie Comer, it’s far more than ghetto TV.

I do have concerns, however. In a Reddit AMA, Jennings said, “The fandom drives the success of the books and the show, and also influences it. Killing Eve: No Tomorrow would be a different book if I hadn’t spent time listening to fans.” It seems a perilous route for any creative person, to let the consumers dictate where your story goes. I’ve already seen Xena: Warrior Princess destroyed when its makers started pandering to the demands of gay fan ‘shippers. Will Killing Eve go the same way? We can only hope it doesn’t.

Split Lip

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★★★
“Split decision”

Definitely a mixed bag in this independent work about an assassin on the run from her employers after she botches a contract. Seay is thoroughly compelling as Set, proving that less can sometimes be more when it comes to dialogue. She’s a woman of few words, yet the strength of her emotions still comes through in her performance. I think it’s the eyes. Unfortunately, the makers appear not to have had enough confidence to let her silence stand on its own. Instead, they fill the gap with the inane burblings of Samuel (Laballe), a young man who sees Seay, and decides she’s a battered woman in need of rescue.  He quickly discovers that isn’t the case, as she ends up rescuing him from one of the killers sent on her trail. However, his sister Dana (Cné) is unimpressed with her brother’s new friend, and turns Set in to her boss, Karlton (Brown).

There’s some nice stuff floating around the fringes as well. In most action films, the hero or heroine takes little more than cosmetic damage over the course of proceedings. That isn’t the case here: every encounter leaves Set more banged up, with the titular injury being just the start. The make-up department has a field day, shall we say. I also liked the occasionally chivalrous conduct and hierarchical structure of the assassins’ “guild”, with its different factions and approaches. In his opening monologue, for instance, Karlton makes clear that the services in which he specializes. are all about getting up close, personal and messy – “What we have to offer, is a message.” And, of course, being shot partly here in Phoenix is always a plus for me, though there’s not much in the way of local atmosphere to speak of.

Yet there are just as many problems, not limited to my strong desire to strangle Samuel every time he opened his mouth. In particular, Set’s actions largely seem illogical, and occur only because they are necessary to the plot e.g. staying in the same hotel room after her location has been discovered. Right from the start, it’s clear the only possible resolution involves either her death or tidying up the mess she created. Running off to Phoenix makes no sense in either direction – especially when her destination is at the suggestion of her boss, who makes no attempt at concealing his intention to have her hunted down. Only after an hour and twenty minutes and several entirely unnecessary tanks of fuel, does our heroine finally do, what made obvious sense from the very beginning.

The action is plentiful and quite well-staged, with the general absence of guns (save for an Indiana Jones-like moment near the end) making sense, given Carlton’s apparent distaste for them. Credit to Seay for doing her own stunts, and everyone else for making it look like she knows what’s she’s doing with her fists, despite a lack of size that becomes something of a running-joke. All told, this is a decent and worthy indie effort, which held our interest – though one undeniably in need of a better script.

Dir: Christopher Sheffield
Star: Dorée Seay, Chris Labadie, Maryam Cné, Dejean Brown

Contract: Snatch by Ty Hutchinson

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Literary rating: ★★★
Kick-butt quotient: ☆☆☆½

Sei is a former assassin, who quit the industry after getting pregnant, then having her daughter stillborn. She has taken up a quiet life in the Belgian countryside, when she’s brought out of retirement by a shocking offer she received over the deep web. Her prospective employer says Sei’s daughter is not dead, and offers information in exchange for carrying out a job: breaking another assassin, the notorious Black Wolf, out of the Turkish prison where he is being held. After confirming with the doctor who was present that the claim of her daughter’s survival is true, Sei accepts the mission. However, it turns out she was set up as a patsy, and finds herself also incarcerated in conditions which seem not have improved much since Midnight Express.

It’s a little odd that Sei is described as an assassin, yet doesn’t actually do any actual… assassinating here. Sure, she certainly kills a lot of people, mostly members of Turkish law-enforcement (as well as a wild boar) – just not for money. Might have made more sense to begin by establishing Sei’s credentials in this profession; as is, the reader has to accept her skills on faith. Perhaps the vague hints of back-story should have been fleshed out more. There’s also a large debt to Kill Bill in the driving force of the story here: specifically, the end of Volume 1, when Bill says, “One more thing, Sofie. Is she aware her daughter is still alive?” To my great surprise – sorry, can’t find the sarcasm font – this element is left entirely unresolved at the end of the volume. Indeed, she’s little if any closer to finding the truth than when she leaves the doctor.

While I’ve qualms about the overall structure here, I did actually enjoy the meat of the sandwich more than the bread. That would be the mission to Turkey, including her initial attempt to free the Black Wolf, then Sei’s subsequent escape from incarceration and flight across the country, with evil prison governor, General Rakin Demir, leading an extremely hot pursuit. It’s a crisply paced saga of action sequences, that have an interesting variety to them, from her compromised attempt to free the Black Wolf, through to a climactic race from Cesme across the Chios Strait to Greece. While she’s mostly a solo operator, who prefers to rely on stealth, she ends up teaming with Kostas, a Greek who… well, let’s just say, his connections come in handy, and I predict, likely will do so again in future volumes.

As the review to this point should make clear, I’m in two minds about whether I’ll be going further, because certain elements I liked and others I didn’t. Sei’s a good character, and I appreciated the almost complete lack of romance to get in the way of the “good stuff.” But I get the feeling the saga of her daughter is going to be stretched out beyond the point of tolerance, to deceased equine level. Probably one of those cases where I’ll wait for volume two to be available at a discounted price.

Author: Ty Hutchinson
Publisher: Gangkruptcy Press, available through Amazon, both as a paperback and an e-book
Book 1 of 5 in the Sei Assassin Thriller series.

Terminal

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★★★½
“Style wars.”

Oozing with a unique visual style that’s like a brutalist cross between Blade Runner and Alice in Wonderland, this focuses on a battle for business between assassins. Annie (Robbie) – or, maybe, she’s called Bonnie – wants to take over the murderous commissions of the mysterious Mr. Franklin. He agrees, only if she takes out the current incumbents, Vince (Fletcher) and his apprentice, Alfred (Irons). Simultaneously, while working as a waitress in an all-night diner at a railway station, she meets Bill (Pegg), a terminally-ill English teacher, who enters her establishment while waiting for a train in front of which to throw himself.

This was ferociously slagged off by many critics, Peter Travers of Rolling Stone calling it, “one of the worst movies ever made.” [Mind you, as the man after whom eFilmCritic named their Quote Whore of the Year award, all his opinions should be taken accordingly…] It’s certainly not that bad, though having stumbled across it on Hulu, our investment in it was strictly limited to 96 minutes. I do admit, the two strands which run through much of the film, never truly mesh. Each works well enough individually – they are just so different in tone and content, you wonder if the script would have been better off sticking to one or the other, and figured out a way to avoid the rather large lump of expository backstory delivered at the end.

However, Annie/Bonnie acts as a binding element to the storylines, manipulating the other three participants with the practiced ease of the expert sociopath. Robbie, who was also a producer, is a hell of a lot of fun to watch, channeling the spirit of Billie Piper, all blonde hair and perkiness; Pegg is also good value, going significantly against his usual type. Fletcher, best known for his roles under director Guy Ritchie, still seems to think he’s in Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels, yet it’s not ineffective. The only performance with which I had a problem was the stunt casting of Mike Myers, in a fairly pivotal role as the station-master. I’ve never exactly been a fan of his approach to (over-)acting, and this film reminded me why.

When it comes to cinematic style, I’ve also been a believer in “go big or go home,” and you won’t be surprised for which direction Stein opts. As a result, this feels not dissimilar to Sucker Punch in its approach, both in terms of the hyper-stylized picture it paints, and also in treading the line between exploiting the male gaze and undermining it [there’s no doubt who the sharpest tool in the box is here, and it’s not even close]. I’d like to have seen the film go a bit more full-bore with the Wonderland theme; the potential there is ignored, and largely limited to a few quotes and nods. Still, we were certainly never bored, the visuals proving capable of tiding us over both the weaker moments in the script, and Mike Myers.

Dir: Vaughn Stein
Star: Margot Robbie, Dexter Fletcher, Simon Pegg, Max Irons

Killing Eve: Season One

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★★★★
“You should never call a psychopath a psychopath. It upsets them.”

A genuinely organic hit on BBC America, this generated so much word of mouth that the ratings for this show behaved in an unexpected fashion. Including those who DVR’d the show, viewership increased for each episode over its 8-week run. That’s a rare feat these days, and is testament to the show’s unique qualities. So confident were the station in the show, that is was renewed for a second season before it had even premiered – another unusual achievement. But then, this show is arguably unlike anything else on television.

The heroine is Eve Polastri (Oh), an officer in the British intelligence service, MI-5, who believes there’s a connection between a string of assassinations across Europe. She’s right: they were all carried out be Oksana Astankova (Comer), codename “Villanelle”. Oksana is a pure, undiluted psychopath, working for a shadowy Russian organization known as “The Twelve”, under handler Konstantin Vasiliev (Bodnia). Polastri’s career is apparently ended when a witness to one of Oksana’s hits is killed in her care, and she’s fired from MI-5. However, this allows her to be recruited by Carolyn Martens (Shaw) for a off-book investigation into Villanelle.

Eve is therefore able to continue digging into Oksana’s history and activities, but the target becomes aware of the interest – signalling that knowledge by using “Eve Polastri” for her identity during a job. From here, it’s a spiral of increasingly intense cat-and-mouse, with Eve and her team tracking the assassin, while also being hunted by her. It all grows deeply personal for both Eve and Oksana, the two women developing a perverse long-distance relationship that’s more of a fixation, on both sides. Note: I’m not using “perverse” in relation to the homoerotic elements. It’s just… really bizarre. As in, “Villanelle breaking into Eve’s house, in order to have dinner with her” strange.

The show is defiantly messy in terms of its characters, who manage both to embody the stereotypes of the dogged law-enforcement official and the slick, femme fatale, while also subverting them. From the viewpoint of this site, Oksana is likely the more interesting. As a high concept, imagine a female version of Dexter: charming and affable on the surface, yet extraordinary lethal – and capable of flicking that switch in a moment. The difference is, Villanelle has chosen not to control and direct her “dark passenger” so much as embrace them fully, and is given the chance to do so by the profession into which she is recruited. It also allows her to indulge her fondness for haute couture.

She enjoys her work, to an almost scary degree, disdaining the simplest and most directly effective methods, too. That’d be boring, especially for such a free spirit. Why shoot, when you can kill your target by stabbing them in the eye with a hatpin instead? On the other hand, she is also incredibly manipulative. Oksana may not be able to feel any genuine emotions of her own, yet she’s supremely good at faking them, and will happily say what you want to hear, if she thinks it’ll let her use you for her own advantage. Her handler doesn’t so much control the incredibly self-confident Villanelle as unleash her in the direction of the intended target. Who inevitably ends up dead… just not necessarily quite as he would prefer.

The contrast to Eve could hardly be greater, and that perhaps goes some way to explaining the agent’s obsession: Oksana is everything Eve wants to be. Okay, except for the “psychopathic killer” bit. But that’s just a detail, right? For Eve is stuck in a rather tedious relationship, and works a job where her talents are under-used and even less appreciated. The more she learns about her target, the greater the appeal seems to be, and it works both ways: Villanelle wants “someone to watch movies with”. Or says she does anyway: this could just be another manipulative ploy, it’s impossible to be sure. Espionage, counter-espionage and assassination is a murky world at the best of times. Here? You can’t see the murk for the deceit, and at times the lies become a bit overwhelming.

After a long career expressing earnest concern on medical soap Grey’s Anatomy, Oh’s career has undergone a spectacular sea-change of late. First, there was the awesome Catfight, and now this, little if any less successful, which allows Oh to show her remarkable range of expressive… er, expressions [Seriously: you could spend an entire episode just watching her face, to the exclusion of everything else, and still be entranced]. Comer is nowhere near as well-known, but I doubt we’ll see a more memorable female character on television this year than Oksana, combining childish innocence, girlish glee and savage psychopathy. When it comes to Emmy time, it will be a travesty if at least one of them is not nominated – and ideally both. The supporting cast are no slouches either.

I will confess to being less than whelmed by the final episode which, rather than ramping up, petered out into something approaching a slumber party. Admittedly, it’s a very weird one, befitting the show, and sees Eve violate Oksana’s personal bubble of living space, partly in retaliation for the same thing happening to her earlier. But it offers no sense at all of closure: this may be a side-effect of the show having been pre-renewed. I guess there’s no point making any effort to wrap things up, when you know you’re going to be back.

Still, for 7½ episodes, this was far and away the best thing on American TV at the moment. To get one of these amazing characters in a show would have been more than acceptable. Having both in the same series provides a one-two punch of heroine and anti-heroine that’s almost unsurpassed in television history. Buffy and Faith, or Xena and Callisto, perhaps come close – although they were only story arcs. Here, Eve and Oksana are a pure, undiluted focus, and it’s glorious. The second season can’t get here soon enough.

Creator: Phoebe Waller-Bridge
Star: Sandra Oh, Jodie Comer, Fiona Shaw, Kim Bodnia

Proud Mary

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★★★
“Leonetta: The Professional”

Despite the distinctly retro feel of the poster, intro and much of the music, this is very much a contemporary affair. Mary (Henson) is an enforcer working for Benny (Glover): at one point, she was in a relationship with his son, Tom (Brown), and he still wants to continue it. During one hit on a debtor, she finds the target’s young son, Danny (Winston), obliviously playing video-games in his bedroom. Struck by guilt, she leaves him alone, and keeps an eye on the kid thereafter. A year later, she rescues him from the abusive drug dealer who has “adopted” Danny, but the resulting bloodbath is a big problem. For the dealer in question worked for Benny’s biggest rival, who is not happy about the removal and demands Benny find the culprit. Mary, who was already fed up and wanting out of her career, has to decide exactly where her loyalties lie.

As the tag-line on top suggests, I was getting very strong hints of a gender-reversed Leon: a female hitman taking a young boy under his wing, and protecting her from the evil forces which threaten to engulf them. There are, admittedly, a number of differences: Mary is not the simple creature who was Leon, and her relationship with Danny is basically maternal, rather than the slightly creepy yet endearing one between Leon and Matilda. Though the main change is one the film almost seems to underplay, when it could (should?) have been the dramatic focus: Mary killed Danny’s father. The major conflict which I expected should ensue from this, never quite materializes.

The film as a whole is a great reminder of how guns work as a “force multiplier”, allowing a skilled woman to face and defeat opponents who are clearly physically stronger than her. That said, the action is merely okay – albeit, given Najafi was responsible for the awful London Has Fallen, “okay” counts as a significant improvement. We were distracted by the frequent, blatant product placement for the remarkably bullet-resistant Maserati, in which Mary whizzed round town [we really needed a scene of someone trying to jack her car, and getting his mistake forcibly explained to him]. While it takes place in Boston, there’s not enough sense of place to make it matter: it could be any grimy inner-city. 

Henson – whom, I assume, uses her middle initial to distinguish her from all the other Taraji Hensons – is solid enough as the heroine, carrying its emotional weight effortlessly, and she keeps this worth watching, despite the flaws. Though this often feels like it’s trying to be weightier than it deserves, almost as if trying to live up to her Oscar-nominated standards. Yet at its heart, this is a formulaic “assassin with a heart of gold” feature, and there just isn’t enough beyond the obvious going on, plotwise, to separate it from its predecessors. Might have been better to embrace its clear B-movie roots, and roll with that aesthetic, rather than abandoning it after about ten minutes.

Dir: Babak Najafi
Star: Taraji P. Henson, Jahi Di’Allo Winston, Billy Brown, Danny Glover

The Housewife Assassin’s Handbook, by Josie Brown

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Literary rating: ★★
Kick-butt quotient: ☆☆☆☆

My preferred format for reading is paper; and that’s the only format I support financially, since the only language Big Publishing understands is dollars and cents. Even for a reader like myself, though, e-books have their uses. Writers can offer particular books for free in that format, and that makes it possible to read them first in order to check the quality before you buy the paper edition. And sometimes that opportunity saves you money that would have been wasted if you’d taken a chance on the paper book to begin with! For me, this series opener (which Brown makes available free in e-book format on a permanent basis) was one of those books I was thankful I didn’t have to spend money on, which I’d have regretted.

The novel’s premise is intriguing enough, and the harrowing first chapter grabbed my attention effectively. We’re plunged into the action right away, with present-day events narrated by protagonist Donna in present tense. At the first opportunity, she drops back into a flashback (in past tense) that gives us an introduction to her childhood and family background –and yes, that’s relevant!– how she met her husband, their few years together, and her discovery, after he was identified as the dead victim of a car wreck on the night she gave birth to their third child, that he had a BIG secret: the corporation he worked for was a front that contracted to do wet work for the CIA, and he was an assassin, most recently assigned to help bring down the Quorum, a shadowy organization of ex-government assassins who’ve gone rogue and are out for profit. (They planted the bomb in his car.) We also learn how, needing to support her kids and wanting to better protect them (long story!), and wanting vengeance on the kinds of scumbags who made her a widow, she subsequently agreed to go to work for Carl’s employer, in his old job. (That’s not as big a stretch as it would be for some women –she learned to shoot as a kid, is naturally talented for and very good at it, and met Carl at a firing range.)

While I was reading the first few chapters, I expected this to be a four-star read. The body of the novel itself (we’ll talk about the italicized chapter beginnings below!) actually is more serious in tone than comedic, although it does have some deadpan humor that arises from the incongruities of Donna’s job responsibilities vs. her domestic ones. Her reflections about the ethics of what she does aren’t approached flippantly, and she’s a well-drawn character who earned my sympathy and respect –a very tough woman, morally and physically, but essentially a good and decent person and a caring mom (who intends to survive and be there for her kids). Brown creates a situation that’s fraught with moral and emotional complexity and shades of gray to start with, and then ups the emotional ante exponentially with a new development –followed by some more really compelling twists and turns, the first one of which I didn’t see coming. (I did suspect the second one.) None of the other characters are developed as fully as Donna, but they’re believable, and the author does conjure a sense of place with the southern California setting (in Orange County). And I liked the depiction of family life, and Donna’s relationship with her kids.

In fairness, I also need to defend Donna against the complaint of one reviewer, who regards her as a moral pariah because she lies to her kids, at a very serious level. Well, yes, she does (although she doesn’t like that situation). But as a reality check, these kids are 12, 10 and 5 years old, with big mouths, limited impulse control, and a child’s immaturity and deficient understanding of danger and the complexities of real-world situations. Even if the lies involved are extreme, telling them the truth in a life-and-death situation, where things they do and say could have disastrous consequences, is not a course I’d advocate.

The principal problem I had here was that the plotting is simply not well thought out, and not convincing. One could argue that the essential premise is far-fetched; but I was okay with suspending disbelief that far. (Whether or not black ops organizations would hire a single mom with kids is a matter of speculation, since real life organizations like this don’t publicize their personnel policies. :-) ) But even within the premise Brown creates, much of her plotting simply doesn’t stand examination. Some of the major actions by the villain(s) are at cross-purposes with some of their other major actions; several events that take place here would involve the police in the story, at a level that couldn’t be ignored, but there’s no indication of that here; Donna’s reasoning for one major decision is weak and unconvincing; and Acme (the company she works for) would be much more actively involved in the decision-making at the end, not passive as it is here. Also, characters could not realistically suddenly just shrug off previously incapacitating wounds (which happens here twice), and there are other significant logical slips that took me out of the story. The author writes prolifically, but she apparently wrote this novel too quickly to take her craftsmanship in plotting seriously, or to put any real thought behind it. (That’s a real shame.)

Finally, a word is in order about the titular “Handbook” aspect. As a gimmick here (and as nearly as I can tell, in the other 15 books of the series as well, though I haven’t read them) Brown prefaces each chapter with short, italicized snippets giving supposed household hints that blend home economics with mayhem. These are unrelated to the story-line (though some may have a passing thematic connection to something in the chapter), don’t advance it in any way, and don’t reflect any things that Donna might actually do. Instead, they’re intended to be humorous (often depending for their humor on exaggerations that are completely over the top). Some readers like these (one reviewer found them to be her favorite aspect of the book!); so as the saying goes, “Your mileage may vary.” Personally, though, their humor generally fell flat for me; it typically strains too hard, and comes across as weak (or nonexistent) and forced. I found them an irritating nuisance that the book would have been better off without. Good fiction doesn’t need gimmicks to appeal; and if the author had given us a tight, plausible, well-constructed plot, this novel wouldn’t have needed any gimmick either.

Ultimately, I gave this two stars rather than one, in consideration of its positive elements; and I did finish it (I had to see how it ended!). But I don’t plan to continue reading the series.

Note: The book includes several episodes of explicit sex –including one that’s very abusive and disgusting, although there’s a defensible literary reason for describing it– and other sexual situations (in the opening scene, Donna’s posing as a prostitute). There’s also some bad language, including the f-word (though in Donna’s vocabulary, the latter is only a verb used in unloving contexts, not an all-purpose adjective/adverb) and in the sexual scenes, vulgar terms for some body parts. Most of the other bad language here is strictly of the d- or h-word sort.

Author: Josie Brown
Publisher: Signal Press, available through Amazon, both for Kindle and as a printed book.

A version of this review previously appeared on Goodreads.

The Contract

  By

★★½
“We’re from the government. We’re here to help.”

I bumped into this one on a stand of ultra-bargain DVDs, at a truck stop on the way home with Chris from an anniversary trip to Las Vegas. The cover, understandably, piqued my interest: the film didn’t manage to make such an impression, except in intermittent bursts. Hannah (Black) is an assassin, working under the tutelage of her father, Luc (Imbault). He spurns a lucrative contract, smelling a rat: Hannah goes behind his back and takes the job, only for Dad to be proven right, when the hit goes wrong. Luc is killed, leaving Hannah and her oblivious artist boyfriend James (Oliver) on the run from Senator Harmon (Williams). He’s a CIA honcho, who has just announced his plans to run for higher office, and needs to clean up certain elements of his past – now including Hannah and James.

Some of the action here is not bad, particularly a well-staged brawl in Hannah’s apartment while James is out for food (or something). It’s an impressive bit of hand-to-hand combat, which packs a wallop and leaves the apartment in severe need of redecoration. The hotel hit which starts the ball rolling is another highlight. Unfortunately, there are just not enough of these scenes, with the bulk of the movie being Hannah and James running away, or trying to find out what’s going on. This includes a spectacularly bad bit of technological babble. James suddenly reveals hacking skills, we discover that “You can trace the email using the graphic code,” and watch as the text of the message changes into numbers. Wot, mate? Do you even computer? I know this was back in the primitive days of 1999, but still…

The plotting is, in general, equally underwhelming. It took me a while to realize Luc was supposed to be Hannah’s father – I guess I should just have looked at the British DVD cover (right, and a bit spoilery)… Quite what Harmon is trying to do is also somewhat vague: it seems to be related to a long-ago black operation, which begs the question, why did he wait so long before deciding to tidy up all these loose ends? Williams makes for a half-decent villain and Black is also solid and watchable as Hannah. That isn’t enough, however, as the bland predictability of the storyline, one we’ve seen rather too often before, drags down the positives.

It all builds to the inevitable face-off, after Hannah tracks down the only surviving person who knows the truth about Harmon, who is now working as a school janitor. I guess being a government sponsored assassin doesn’t come with a decent pension plan. The final battle is actually the most disappointing bit of action here, swapping out the close-combat fights showcased earlier, for opponents standing some distance apart and popping off rounds at each other. You’re left with a solid appreciation for why this has been consigned to the discount racks at gas-stations.

Dir: K.C. Bascombe
Star: Johanna Black, Matthew Oliver, Billy Dee Williams, Laurent Imbault

Confessions of a Slightly Neurotic Hitwoman by J.B. Lynn

  By

Literary rating: ★★
Kick-butt quotient: ☆☆

I guess there is at least something logical about this, in how its heroine, Maggie Lee, becomes the assassin of the title. She takes on her first contract to pay the medical bills of her niece, left in a coma after a car accident which killed her parents and injured Maggie. That’s the kind of motivation which I can see, causing a person to take desperate steps. Unfortunately, it’s a rare island in a sea of largely implausible plotting and uninteresting characters.

First is how she comes to the attention of the mob: visiting her niece, she stumbles across a man assaulting another patient and fights him off. Turns out the patient is the head of the Delveccio crime family, who decides to hire Maggie to whack the assailant, his son-in-law. Quite why he prefers to entrust this to an insurance call-centre employee, when he clearly has far more experienced and capable personnel to hand, is never explained. Nor his decision to entrust Maggie with a minder, somewhat bent cop Patrick Mulligan, who trains her in the finer arts of killing. And I mean that sarcastically, since he has to explain that rule number one is, “Don’t get caught.” Really.

Then there’s the other cop, Paul Kowalski, who pulls Maggie over to give her a traffic ticket, which ends up with him asking her on a date. I’m not sure what purpose he serves in this store, except to set up the inevitable love triangle between him, Maggie and Patrick. Oh, and did I mention that Maggie can converse with animals, including her niece’s pet lizard? Why? Because her mother is in the loony bin, I guess: either that, or perhaps this talent was triggered by the accident. It’s such an incongruous element, in a series which is trying to remain relatively grounded in reality, it appears to have strayed in from another book entirely. I was also unimpressed with Maggie’s family, who are annoying more than endearing and whose drama occupy reams of pages, to the point that I wondered if Lynn was being paid by the word.

Once she has got through her first mission, turns out that’s far from the end of it, as Delveccio’s regular hit-man takes credit for the job, and Maggie has to get rid of him as well, in order to collect her fee. This is about the only sequence which managed to stick in my mind, bringing home effectively the point that killing someone can be difficult and unpleasant, especially when it’s not just a case of squeezing a trigger. But I’ve got to be honest: this book took twice as long to get through as most I’ve reviewed here. For when I went to bed, and it was a choice between reading some more chapters and fluffy, pillow-shaped goodness… The lure of Morpheus was generally a lot greater than the lure of Maggie.

Author: J.B. Lynn
Publisher: Avon Impulse, available through Amazon as an e-book – used copies of the paperback are… kinda pricey. As in five hundred bucks!

The Villainess

  By

★★★½
“Action cinema levels up in Korea.”

This opens with a blistering seven minutes of action which starts off in first-person perspective, looking like the most deranged video game ever, as the protagonist slices, dices and shoots their way through a building to a confrontation with the final boss. After being slammed head-first into a mirror, the point of view changes and we see the attacker is a young woman, Sook-hee (Kim Ok-bin). Finishing her slaughter, she calmly accepts arrest, but the Korean intelligence services recruit her, hoping to channel her skills to their own ends, after a spot of plastic surgery to ensure a fresh start. When training is completed, under Chief Kwon (Kim Seo-hyung), she’s given an apartment, unaware that the man next door, Jung Hyun-soo (Sung), is actually her handler. However, he’s not the only person with something to hide. Because Sook-hee is out to leverage her new position, and is still after long-awaited revenge on the man who killed her father.

With a storyline that’s little more than equal parts of Nikita and Kill Bill, deep-fried in a crimson vat, the only way this is going to survive is to be all about the style. Fortunately, it delivers on that aspect by the bucket. I watched that opening sequence three times before I could bring myself to proceed, and other set-pieces are almost as spectacular (and slightly less motion sickness inducing!), such as the sword-fight on speeding motorbikes. Or the final battle on a bus. Or… Yeah, let’s just say, when this is in motion, it’s utterly glorious, demented and bloody beyond belief. The problems are when it isn’t, with a horribly muddled narrative structure which also seems cribbed from Tarantino. So it’s extremely heavy on the flashbacks, and leaps around the heroine’s time-line like an amphetamine crazed mountain-goat. The payoff, when it arrives, certainly isn’t worth the effort: I’d figured it out, well before the dramatic revelation arrives on-screen.

So convoluted and murky is the story, that I found myself increasingly tuning out, and was more or less disinterested in the characters’ fates, most damningly that of Sook-hee. About the only person I cared about was her little, moon-faced daughter, whose serious expressions provoked more emotion in me than all the contortions performed by the plotting. Director Jung, like David Leitch of Atomic Blonde, has a background as a stuntman before moving into direction, and perhaps that explains why it feels as if the attention and effort here have gone into those elements. In comparison, the script is something which could well have been cobbled together on the back of a beer-mat, after an all-night video session, and then run through a shredder in an attempt to instill it with some artistic merit. Jung is certainly an action director to watch, and I’ll be very interested to see where he can possibly go from here. Is there a setting for cinematic violence above eleven?

Dir: Jung Byung-gil
Star: Kim Ok-bin, Shin Ha-kyun, Sung Joon, Kim Seo-hyung