From bestselling author Luke Jennings, the second razor-sharp novella in the Villanelle conspiracy thriller series.
She's back. Beautiful and predatory, the lethal instrument of a secret organisation dedicated to manipulating world events from behind the scenes, Villanelle is the ultimate assassin. Her target, a firebrand Russian leader whose extreme political theories threaten to unleash global conflict. But lying in wait for Villanelle is Eve Polastri of MI5. A hunter by nature, and fiercely intelligent, Eve is ready to pursue her adversary wherever the search leads her...
LUKE JENNINGS is the author of Blood Knots, short-listed for the Samuel Johnson and William Hill prizes, and of several novels, including the Booker Prize-nominated Atlantic. As a journalist he has written for The Observer, Vanity Fair, the New Yorker and Time.
Luke Jennings is an author and the dance critic of The Observer. He trained at the Rambert School and was a dancer for ten years before turning to writing.
As a journalist he has written for Vanity Fair, the New Yorker and Time, as well as for numerous British titles. He is the author of Blood Knots, a memoir, short-listed for the 2010 Samuel Johnson and William Hill prizes, and of three novels: Breach Candy, Beauty Story, and the Booker Prize-nominated Atlantic. With Deborah Bull, he wrote The Faber Guide to Ballet, and with his daughter Laura, the Stars fiction series for Puffin Books, about teenagers at a stage-school.
He is currently writing a follow-up to his 2017 thriller Codename Villanelle (John Murray). The Villanelle titles are the basis for BBC America's upcoming TV series Killing Eve, airing in 2018 and starring Sandra Oh and Jodie Comer.
The second instalment in the life and times of contract killer Villanelle. We learn more of her cover and back story although this is just padding out what the first episode told is. We are presented with a cold hearted, emotionally inert individual who has spy tradecraft and a self preservation streak. We learn more about her handler and his concerns about her risk taking on her last mission. Her next kill is planned for London and so we are introduced to her potential nemesis a female agent in the security services who has a sense of Villanelle's existence but no real proof or evidence. We learn that our assassin is not only cold and calculating but a total professional. Her weakness may be her sexual nature but to date it has always been an aid to her. Her many faceted and multiple identities and characters mean we struggle to find any empathy, leaving aside she is a killer, but her upbringing and family disconnect means we can initially sympathise with her early mistakes. Her motivation and recruitment arose while she was in prison so she had little option other than to agree to take this path; the problem being though she was already a fragile and damaged human being. There is enough here initially drip fed to us in kindle singles to make us want to engage with her story. The good new is that the author's four episodes have become a composite novel Codename Villanelle.
I love seeing how the show took certain aspects of the story. Love how Phoebe took the heart of the story and made it for TV with women at the fore front. Of course this novella has "Macho" bullshit, it's written by a man what can you expect but if your willing to overlook stereotypical sexism we learn more about villanelle and Eve. One thing that really is beginning to annoy. Everytime we see Villanelle she is having sex and every time we see Eve she recalls her failed pregnancy as if her uterus rules her.
Suite du livre basé sur la série culte de la BBC. Dans cet épisode, on en apprend plus sur les adversaires : Eve travaille aux services de renseignement britannique et rêve de fonder une famille avec son mari alors que Villanelle est un assassin de luxe au tendance psychopathe. Deux personnalités bien différentes pour une rencontre qui va faire des étincelles ! L’histoire fonctionne bien avec la publication par épisode, l’intrigue se met en place et on veut connaître la suite !
He visto las 3 temporadas de la serie en la que se basan de estos libros y fue por esa razón que me llamó la atención de leerlos. Buena introducción de Eve.