Mrs Shim is a Killer

Mrs Shim Is a Killer is a darkly funny Korean crime thriller about survival, family, and an unlikely contract killer. Fifty-one-year-old Mrs Shim is widowed, unemployed, and desperate to support her two children when she answers an advertisement from the Smile Detective Agency. Expecting cleaning work, she discovers that the agency needs someone with her butcher’s precision and skill with a cleaver—for murder. Mrs Shim quickly becomes its most effective assassin, but success brings jealous colleagues, rival agencies, and a deadly turf war dangerously close to her family. First published in Korea in 2023, the novel combines sharp social observation, suspense, absurdist humour, and a fiercely memorable heroine.