Adam Colclough lives and works in the West Midlands, he writes regularly for a number of websites, one day he will get round to writing a book for someone else to review.
Renseng is a hitman following the orders of the shadowy 'Plotters' on the mean streets of Seoul. If it's possible, he's happy in his work; at least he is until the day he makes the mistake of letting a victim choose how he dies. Suddenly it seems his bosses may have decided Renseng and outfit he works for are surplus to requirements.
Un-Su Kim has taken an established theme in the crime genre, that of the hunter turned hunted, and given it an interesting new twist. You might even say he has turned it into something close to an existentialist fable about how people make meaning out of their lives, and out of what they consider their purpose. What happens when events cause them to question that meaning?
The setting is a surreal South Korea where murder plots are hatched in a library that has never loaned out a book, and the victims are disposed of in a pet crematorium. There is a clear debt to hyper-violent Hollywood movies with an added Eastern dimension, provided by characters who are as adept at contemplating the meaning of life as they are at ending it using a knife
Reading this intriguing and often blackly comical novel has been my first encounter with Korean crime writing. One that suggests a sub-genre that is worth closer examination by anyone looking for a fresh take on the business of fictional murder
