Have had this one in the reading queues for quite a while now, so when an audio version of it appeared, read by New Zealander, Eva Seymour, I jumped at it. There's nothing like hearing the Māori language pronounced the way it should be.
A dystopian eco-thriller, SHE'S A KILLER is set somewhere in the future, in a New Zealand that is struggling under the weight of climate collapse and government corruption. The other complication is the way the government is encouraging an influx of wealthy, privileged immigrants, referred to as "wealthugees". They come from lots of different places the world over, buying up land and housing, sending the prices of basic staples soaring, and creating an us and them society that is making life very hard for the locals, destroying yet more of the natural assets of the place.
The central story here revolves around thirty-something year old Alice, a woman with a near-genius IQ, no social skills, a difficult relationship with her mother and a very vocal imaginary friend, Simp. For a woman, who started out as a very troubled child, going as far as setting fire to the family home, she has eventually gone onto university to do psychology, before dropping out and doing nothing sorts of jobs for many years, one of which she resigns from in a grand gesture, about the same time as she meets wealthugee Pablo, a man with a teenage daughter and an ex-wife, who is a well known sex blogger in China. Pablo then urgently needs to go back to China to help out his now kidnapped ex, leaving Erika, the teenager, in need of somewhere to stay. A financial arrangement is pressed onto Alice, and Erika moves into the bottom half of the house that Alice shares with her mother, after which, things start to get very dark indeed. Not just because Alice's half of the house is a bit of a tip, she has a mother upstairs that she's only communicated with via Morse code for years, and their house is opposite a recreational facility that's turned into a tip as well. There's something NQR about Erika, which Alice slowly comes to realise is more than just NQR, but the money's good, Alice hasn't really been eating well for a long time now, to say nothing of not being able to afford their water bill, her relationship with her best friend is turning sour, and a myriad of other life complications.
Billed as a thriller, SHE'S A KILLER a bit more than just that. It's social commentary, a look at outsiders, and, importantly, a chilling insight into what could easily be happening in a few years in a lot of places, with people priced out of water availability, food at a premium, and populations hamstrung by corrupt governments. In fact, now that I write that, it doesn't feel quite as futuristic as you might think.
On the thriller side, it might feel a little slow to get started - the psychological aspects and the build up of character, place and motivation takes a while to fall into place. Once it does though it is all action and threat, based within an unusual plot. It's an interesting character study of Alice, a highly intelligent, utterly lacking in empathy, disengaged and disinterested woman with more than a dose of pain in the arse about her. She's got one best friend, Amy, who she's known from childhood, a woman with problems of her own, including an overbearing, dick of a man for a husband, an architect that's well fond of himself, he seems to be pushing Amy and their three kids into a prepper lifestyle, complete with fenced off secure compound in the NZ bush much to Alice's disquiet. Although is Alice worried about Amy or wanting to exert some control of her own? Hard to tell with her. Especially as there is a backstory emerging about what Alice has been doing over her life, and the sorts of choices she's made, and people she's alternatively sucked up to or pissed off. There's a long list, it's been a complicated life.
Whilst all of this may sound just a bit weird, it works in the context of this story. There is always the possibility that Alice is an unreliable narrator, or there's somebody behind all of this pulling some pretty twisted strings. Either way there's always that thought - Alice has a genius IQ, if she can't see what's happening around here, is she really part of something bigger, as the novel puts it "... just another self-interested interest group - with guns".
Even if dystopian isn't your reading bag, this one is well worth picking up. The scenario it depicts is so believable that your disbelief will never be called upon. The threat is so possible, you're not going to be asked to make some leaps of faith. In fact, the whole thing is so real it's more than a bit disconcerting. Alice's head might be a bit crowded already, what with Simp in full time residence, but she's definitely somebody who will let a reader in, just a little bit, until this very clever author delivers the reader, and Alice, to somewhere this particular follower was not expecting at all.
She's A Killer
The world’s climate is in crisis and New Zealand is being divided and reshaped by the arrival of privileged immigrant wealthugees.
Thirty-something Alice has a near-genius IQ and lives at home with her mother with whom she communicates by Morse code. Alice’s imaginary friend, Simp, has shown up, with a running commentary on her failings. ‘I mean, can you even calculate the square root of 762 anymore?’ The last time Simp was here was when Alice was seven, on the night a fire burned down the family home. Now Simp seems to be plotting something.
When Alice meets a wealthugee named Pablo, she thinks she’s found a way out of her dull existence. But then she meets Pablo’s teenage daughter, Erika – an actual genius full of terrifying ambition.
She’s a Killer is the story of a brilliant and stubborn slacker who is drawn into a radical action. It’s about what happens when we refuse to face our most demanding problems, told by a woman who is a strange and calculating force of chaos.