When the titular character of Kang Jiyoung’s novel Mrs. Shim Is a Killer loses her husband in a car crash, she is forced to close their Seoul butcher shop and look for new work. She answers an ad from the Smile Detective Agency seeking “housewives 40 and older,” or ajumma, as they are called in Korean.

During her interview, the boss, Mr. Park, asks her to display her knife skills. Impressed, he says, “I’ll make you an offer, point-blank. I’d like you to become a killer. Doesn’t everyone have one person they hate enough to kill? If you decide to accept, Mrs. Shim, you’d be able to help so many wronged people by fulfilling their most desperate wishes.”

Mrs. Shim immediately pees her pants.

An ajumma myself, I recoiled at this. Mrs. Shim is only 51 years old. Sure, she was shocked and terrified, and, yes, she had given birth to two children, but most 50-somethings are still in control of their bladders.

However, I soon became engrossed in the fast-paced, multi-character, dizzyingly detailed, intricate plot. Each chapter is narrated in the first person, with some characters narrating several chapters, while others (usually the ones who are killed) appearing only once. The main characters’ backstories are lavishly constructed, chockfull of horrific incidents and tragic twists.

That’s a problem. There are so many stories crammed into this novel that it becomes hard to keep track of each character and their particular history. Stories are nestled within stories until the book is like a hall of mirrors, the tales infinitely reflecting each other, the reader trying hard not to get lost among the profusion of narratives.

As it happens, the world of Seoul contract killers is a small, incestuous one. They operate from one of two rival detective agencies: Smile and Happy. Smile dominated the market due to Mr. Park’s legendary knife skills, but when he stopped killing, Happy took over as number one.

Then, dead bodies start piling up, and residents begin to worry about a serial killer. At Happy Detective Agency, there’s talk that Mr. Park has a new, ruthlessly efficient employee. They call her the Ajumma Killer and wonder who she could possibly be.

Meanwhile, in order to claim some of the contract-killing business back, the owner of the Happy Detective Agency, Mr. Na, recruits a new assassin, a young man just out of the military who lives with his mom and sister and is looking to earn some money so the sister, bright and studious, can enroll in university.

Turns out, Mrs. Shim lives with her son and daughter and worries about how to pay for college for both of them. Could it be that the young man whom Mr. Na is training in the art of lethal stabbing is Mrs. Shim’s son?

No spoilers here, but as the book reaches its climax, the narrators become more and more entwined until it’s like they’re one big family but for the bloody murders. This being South Korea — with its sensible handgun laws — the killings are carried out with a variety of knives, and in one particularly gruesome case, a pair of chopsticks. The lone gun in the story belongs to a policeman.

While the novel’s translation by Paige Morris matches the rollercoaster tempo of the story, there are occasional odd choices that make the reader wonder if the translator is being too faithful to the original text and might’ve done better to bend the meaning a little to make the prose more comprehensible or elegant (e.g., “a helmet head full of curls”). Some passages left me puzzled. The novel also contains a multitude of cultural references that may elude those with little knowledge of contemporary Korean life.

The book’s cozy and humorous tone belies its social criticism. Mrs. Shim kills people so that she can pay for her children’s education. She tells her daughter:

“Seems like the world could be yours if you only study hard, hm?...But that’s not true. Women have to get married to be seen as adults, and they have to give birth to be seen as people.”

Families are ruined by poverty, gambling, and infidelity. Parents inflict their own trauma on their children. The only way to get ahead in an economic environment rigged for the elite patriarchy is by murder.

The ending reveals that Mrs. Shim Is a Killer is comedy and not satire, the dark tone shifting to allow some of the characters the grace of happy outcomes. Apparently, even ajummas who pee their pants might enjoy new beginnings.  

[Editor’s note: This review originally ran in 2025.]

Ajumma Alice Stephens is the author of the novel Famous Adopted People. Her historical novel, The Twain: A Tale of Nagasaki, is forthcoming in February 2027.