I have to admit, I mostly picked this one up for two reasons – the title, and because I chuckled at the premise. The Hitwoman’s Guide to Reducing Household Debt, the debut novel from Mark Muposta-Russell, promised to be everything I love in a book – funny and quirky, but still full of enough heart to stick with you long after you put it down. While it didn’t quite succeed on all of those points, the book is certainly one I won’t forget in a hurry, deliciously dark with a good helping of tragedy and comedy both.
As you may have guessed from the title, our protagonist Olivia is a hitwoman. Or at least, she used to be. That was before she fled the Spanish crime syndicate she was working for, fell in love, started a successful business, and raised a perfectly normal family back in Australia.
Whilst her past still haunts her to this day, and she lives a life of nigh-constant vigilance, Olivia is happy. And then tragedy strikes in the form of a seemingly random criminal act, and there’s only one way she can deal with her overflowing emotions – revenge, of the bloody sort.
First problem is, she sees this event as payment for her past crimes – so to prevent more even more payback, she needs to set things up so the men cause their own deaths. Second problem, the cops are on the trail too, and she can’t let them solve the crime before her work is done.
What follows is a rollicking action flick of a book. Intriguing investigations and planning sequences are interspersed with high-octane action scenes and quietly heartwarming – and heartbreaking – family sections. This back and forth infuses the novel with deep seated tension, an anxiety that all too soon, the carefully-built life Olivia has created for herself will come crashing down. Though I wouldn’t describe the plot as particularly unexpected or subversive in itself, it is executed well, nailing the emotive highs and lows, making you care about how the cards will fall.
While the book has its fair share of action and feats of physical prowess, it’s also a novel about how people define their own morality, how you can (or can’t) face the world after doing something truly awful, and about a marriage. Of course the action sequences and intense murder planning sessions make the book a delight to read, but it’s this raw beating heart of the novel and its multi-faceted characters which truly makes it shine.
Olivia is by no means an impossible action movie badass, instead she’s a conflicted woman whose flaws and inevitable spiral towards all-consuming rage makes her all the more compelling. Her relationship with her husband Jai – a man who knows nothing of her real past, who has been lied to since the very beginning – is sweet, filled with healthy communication despite the dark secret at its very centre. It all combines to make every moment, quiet or loud, deeply compelling, and giving the novel’s climax all the more impact.
If there was one real flaw with this book, however, it would be the humour. Coming into this book, I was expecting something hilarious, with plenty of darkly funny laugh-out-loud moments. That is not what this book delivers. Don’t get me wrong, it’s not unfunny – the prose is suffused with a dry wit and there is the odd pop of dark humour – it’s just not quite as funny as that tongue in cheek, eye-catching title led me to expect.
Though it’s not quite the book I was expecting, and it’s not without its minor flaws, The Hitwoman’s Guide to Reducing Household Debt is a cracking debut, a compelling mix of intensity and introspection which makes for a thoroughly enjoyable read.
FOUR STARS (OUT OF FIVE)
The Hitwoman’s Guide to Reducing Household Debt by Mark Muposta-Russell is available now from Affirm Press. Grab yourself a copy from a local bookshop HERE.
