My version: Paperback
Genre: Fiction Thriller, espionage
Publisher: John Murray
First published: 2018
ISBN: 9781473666412
Pages: 217
Bought
From the cover:
She is the perfect assassin.
A Russian orphan, saved from the death penalty for the brutal revenge she took on her gangster father’s killers.
Ruthlessly trained. Given a new life. New names, new faces – whichever fits.
Her paymasters call themselves the Twelve. But she knows nothing of them. Konstantin is the man who saved her, and the one she answers to.
She is Villanelle. Without conscience. Without guilt. Without weakness.
Eve Polastri is the woman who hunts her. MI5, until one error of judgement costs her everything.
Then stopping a ruthless assassin becomes more than her job. It becomes personal.
I haven’t seen the TV series, I’ve hear is is pretty good. And I’m glad they have ‘the basis of the hit series’ on the front of this, because the book, isn’t. Isn’t very good. Not that it’s bad, it’s just a long way from being as good as I’ve heard the series is and as good as the ‘gloriously exciting’ on the front.
It’s cliche-ridden, but doesn’t really use those cliches to do anything much different with them. The Villanelle character is basically a robot. The interesting character is Eve. She might become something in subsequent volumes, if I get hold of one. I say she might, as this one is very short, and pretty much stops as soon as the whole thing might be on to something. As if this Luke person wrote the whole story from start to finish, then chopped them up so they could be be released separately and make a series/more money. I suppose he might be going for a pulp fiction feel, making you rush breathlessly to the bookseller of your choice demanding the next volume, but if that is the case, he’ll have to put something more into the story than this.
But don’t take my word for it, you can buy Killing Eve Codename Villanelle from The Book Depository
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