The Hitwoman’s Guide To Reducing Household Debt by Mark Mupotsa-Russell is a dark, funny, violent and original suspense thriller. 

After leaving the defence forces, Olivia Hodges became a hit woman for hire in Spain, working for a ruthless syndicate. She fled that life to save her own and returned to Australia where she took up an ordinary suburban existence with a husband and two daughters in the leafy eastern suburbs of Melbourne.

I think I’m missing a piece inside. Something crucially human. I’m not sure when I lost it – Spain probably – but I can feel the hole it left behind, like a pulled tooth.

When a group of young men turned bank robbers accidentally kill one of her children while fleeing the scene of a crime, Olivia wants revenge. Her challenge is that she thinks the incident is karmic revenge for her own past crimes. She needs to get payback without accruing any further karmic debt that could put her remaining family members at risk.

I was never the movie ideal of a hitwoman. My kills were uncinematic. No poisoned darts at the opera, single-handedly defeating the Yakuza or honey-potting the Russian ambassador. I speak one and a half languages, at best, and the highest political contract I ever got was president of the local bocce club.

Olivia goes to great lengths to set up situations where the men she is after get themselves killed. At the same time she is trying to mislead the police to give herself time to wreak revenge before they solve the crime of her daughters death.

In my experience every cult starts with Let’s build utopia! And Speak directly to God! But pretty soon it’s Did we mention enlightenment can only be inhaled from the Supreme Leader’s penis?

The Hitwoman’s Guide To Reducing Household Debt is a wild ride of action interspersed with suburban tragedy and plenty of tension. It’s also about personal morality, families and grief.