GU BYUNG-MO
Killers never get a pension
translation by Dimitris Alexiou
ed. Dioptra, 2023, p. 256

Dagana is 65 years old, and now she is thinking about what to do with the money she earned from her job and has been saving all this time. Maybe buy a small apartment building to rent apartments. Maybe he’ll open a fried chicken shop. Everyone eats fried chicken. However, whatever he chooses, it will be something ordinary and certainly not related to the work that he has been doing for almost half a century. Because Dagana is a professional killer. A member of an infectious disease company that employs several of her own “handlers,” she completes an average of one contract a week, never asking for details she doesn’t need to get the job done. You don’t need to know what the victim did to “deserve” death, nor who pays the company to kill him. You just do it and come home to cook dinner.

The heroine makes the villain take the risk of opening up in her life and sympathetically see someone outside the armor that surrounds her.

Dagana, 65, works mostly with a knife. She has several hidden in the hem of her cardigan, and each time she chooses the most suitable one. She is very good at her job, but for the most part she is “invisible”: seeing this tiny Korean with her good (but not too) clothes, well-groomed (but not oversaturated) hair and cute manners, she is not going to pass by. remember that he killed so many people. Dagana has a knack for handling the cases she receives and vanishing into thin air, blending in with the crowd. Only years pass, and he is no longer the same as he was before. When she was young, she could beat any man in a fight, even with one hand. She was trained at a very high level – and, of course, still is. But she is still big now, with many minor pains in her body, her fingers do not hold the knife very stable, and her legs do not help her either. He is getting old.

On top of that, she also has young people in the company who make fun of her age. Basically one: Fight. A young “handler” with terrible manners, ironic and sarcastic, who never misses an opportunity to slander and belittle her. Dagana avoids him as best she can and is afraid of him. Just like he is afraid of everyday life. He wants to start looking like the rest of the normal world. But it’s so hard. She can’t even go get her nails done, which are short and broken – her job is to blame too. And he constantly trembles at the prospect of sleeping with someone. How can she be sure he wasn’t thrown in front of her to expose or kill her? Even if he wants to do it, he wants to open up now before it’s too late. Otherwise, she will be left alone with her dog Psofimi, with whom her relationship is still typical.

Of course, all this will be turned upside down, and Dagana will have to make a series of life-and-death decisions. Because it’s not enough that she grows up feeling worthless and abandoned, it’s not enough that she’s prone to making mistakes, but it also made her brave to take the risk of opening up in her life and seeing with compassion someone outside the armor that surrounds her. for so many decades. now outside of her protective shell, a shell that would reveal long-buried feelings. Dagana will be horrified to discover that she can still care for people, as she did, once upon a time, when she lived in poverty, on the outskirts of society. But emotions are forbidden for a woman like her. They can lead to death – and her, and others: innocent.

Not yet a typical thriller – although it is indeed (also) a thrilling romance with many adventurous scenes and conflicts – about old age, death and the weight of our choice, full of hidden black humor, elegantly written, with rigor and emotion. .