A review by Nalini Haynes
In recent years I discovered a love of vigilante fiction: fiction where anti-heroes mete out justice because social systems have failed. In this vein I adore The Change by Kirsten Miller and Seven Sisters by Katherine Kovacic. When I read the blurb for The Hitwoman’s Guide to Reducing Household Debt, I thought this was another such novel.
The advertised premise is that a former hitwoman’s past catches up with her and threatens her family. She fears it’s karmic retribution so she begins taking out villains via “accidents” and arranging for villains to kill one another. The scope for humor – albeit dark – and for justice leaps out of the blurb. So I actually laid down good money for this book.
In the beginning…
In the beginning Olivia has a bleak view of humanity. There are hints that her house-husband is actually self-serving in a manipulative manner but perhaps that’s just Olivia’s low expectations. An old “friend” shows up, triggering all sorts of reactions. I must say this meeting has overtones of those supposedly “heartwarming” videos where men surround a woman glaring at her menacingly only for every man in the crowd to suddenly proffer a rose. These videos are not cutesy. If I was in that situation, I’d be screaming and calling the police long before they got to the rose bit. And, likewise, there’s an incident early in this book.
Then one of Olivia’s daughters is fridged.
Olivia is determined to hunt down the perpetrators to get justice.
At this point, the fridging of a five year old is probably enough to put a lot of readers off. But if you can get past that point – as I did because I paid for this book and hoped it would get better – then you may expect, as I did, for justice to be meted out.
And for a while Mupotsa-Russell seems to head in that direction successfully, although it’s a stretch for Victoria Police to suspect nondisabled straight white upper-middle-class Olivia on the basis of CCTV showing Olivia was a witness to an accidental death. If she was part of a minority group? Sure. Absolutely. But she’s not.
The real issue I have with this story is that it jumps the tracks. The advertising promises a hitwoman who worries about karma and is, effectively, an avenging angel. However, Mupotsa-Russell switches out John Wick for The Menu somewhere in the last third of the book. And then, instead of Olivia redeeming herself, he force-feeds readers an incredibly bleak view of Olivia and her husband.
The wrap
Although I’m partial to vigilante/revenge fic, it needs – for me at least – to be about justice. The Hitwoman’s Guide to Reducing Household Debt goes off the rails, abandons its flirtation with karma and, instead, indulges in torture porn before the resolution. This appeals to some readers. Not to me.
