Gu Byeong-Mo; trans. Chi-Young Kim
The Old Woman with the Knife by Gu Byeong-Mo, translated from the Korean by Chi-Young Kim, is an engaging crime fiction thriller with a twist. An international bestseller, the novel is a fast-paced page-turner.
The narrative opens with a middle-aged, non-descript woman who gets on a crowded Seoul subway train. She blends in with her surroundings and watches quietly when a belligerent male passenger berates a young pregnant woman for occupying a seat on the train while he remains standing. The middle-age woman follows him when he gets off the train and, without so much as batting an eyelid, she fatally stabs him with her knife before proceeding calmly to the restroom.
This is our introduction to a six-five-year-old woman, code-named Hornclaw. Hornclaw works for a company specializing in disease control. But this is no ordinary disease control. And Hornclaw is no ordinary employee. This company employs assassins who commit murder for paying clients. Hornclaw has been in the line of work of eliminating “vermin” for over forty years. She asks no questions and follows orders. She is a well-respected professional in her field and continues to work in spite of her declining physical abilities. For obvious reasons, she is a recluse, living alone with an aging rescue dog she named Deadweight as her only companion. Things are proceeding relatively well for her until she becomes a target. And that’s when the cat and mouse games begin leading to a bloody crescendo at the end of the novel. The final fight scene is bloody, violent, and visceral.
The narrative unfolds in unembellished, straight-forward diction. Hornclaw’s background and how she ended up in this line of work is revealed intermittently throughout the narrative. Her interiority is penetrating. Her comments on aging and the invisibility of the elderly in society—especially women—are incisive. She is empathic at times, ruthless at others. That Byeong-Mo generates sympathy for an aging, cold-blooded murderer is a testament to her skill as a writer and a credit to the translation of Chi-Young Kim.