Volume 2: No Tomorrow. London: John Murray. 2018.   248 pp.

Volume 3: Die For Me [UK: Endgame]. London: John Murray. 2020.   228 pp.

All those who have watched the hit TV-series “Killing Eve” will be well-familiar with the key protagonists (and adversaries, with ambivalent bonds developing among them), Villanelle and Eve Polastri. The former is a highly and intelligent skilled female contract killer, who has a photographic memory, but no empathy, no feelings of guilt, no consciousness, and no ability to enter social relationships. In her mind, she has a folder with all sorts of social situations and the required behavior in them. She can imitate that behavior, but she cannot feel it. She is also a sex-maniac, with no clear preference for either males or females. She was born Oxana Borisovna Vorontsova, daughter of a Russian police officer. When he was killed by a gang of criminals whom he had also served, she went to the hangout of the three killers the kills them effortlessly as well as viciously. That was shortly before she would have sat for the final exam in Linguistics at the University of Perm. Awaiting her sentence in a penal institution, she was visited by Konstantin to recruit her as an assassin working for “The Twelve,” a mysterious and secretive group of highly influential people, who regularly hired killers to eliminate other influential people whom they saw as affecting their interests. Oxana agrees to Konstantin’s offer, because the prospect of staying for decades in a Russian penal colony is much less attractive. But before she can become active in her job, she needs to learn all the skills that will be necessary to survive. She undergoes thorough training in several countries, mostly in their secret organizations specializing in the tasks she needs to learn. When Konstantin picks her up after her initial period of physical training, her trainer remarks to him, “You know she’s a fucking psycho.” On which Konstantin responds with “Nobody’s perfect” (p. 19). After the yearlong training, Oxana becomes “Villanelle,” complete with a new identity. She takes up residence in a Paris apartment.

            Eve Polastri worked for the British MI5 in a rather low-level intelligence analysis section. She is Merit to Niko, a Polish who teaches mathematics to kids and Bridge to all those who attend the club where he works as a volunteer. He does not have much inkling about Eve’s job. This becomes more of a strain on their marriage after Villanelle kills a Russian nationalist after a lecture he had given in London. Initially, Eve had not seen a need to protect him, but later changed her mind. Yet, when she requested a protection team her request was rejected. As a result of the killing, she is demoted. In her mind however, the killing had made this female killer was responsible for a string of other eliminations of high-profile people in several other countries. After a short while, Eve is recruited by a high-ranking officer at the MI6 for a mission so secret that she must tell nobody about it, not even her husband. The reason is that the rejection of her request had probably been initiated by a person within the MI5 who also worked for “The Twelve.” For this job, Eve is also physically isolated in an office away from the headquarters. While in Shanghai with her partner, Simon Mortimer, to exchange knowledge with a person within the Chinese Secret Service, Simon behaves rather unprofessionally in letting his sexual phantasies be roused by a Chinese transvestite, who steals his official mobile phone. Simon follows him and sees him when that person hands the phone over to Konstantin. This is his death sentence. A swift cut with a combat knife by Villanelle almost decapitates him. From now on, hunting Villanelle down also becomes personal for Eve (and a hunter, she is).

            A while after her return to London, her new team, helped by Niko and his friends, discover who the internal traitor is. Therefore, Niko is hopeful that they can establish an ordinary family life. “He sits up and stretches out his arms. ‘It’s over, then, that project you were working on? Behind his back, she [Eve] takes the Glock 19 pistol from her waistband holster and transfers it to her bag. ‘No,’ she says. ‘It’s just beginning.’” In fact, already at this point, Eve Polastri is obsessed by hunting Villanelle down. The Glock 19 is a new acquisition for which she had undergone two weeks of gun training since she realized that one should better be able to defend oneself when confronting Villanelle.

No Tomorrow

At the end of the first volume, Villanelle’s handler and Mentor is kidnapped by a criminal gang in Odessa. A group with Villanelle and former acquaintance Lara is put together, presumably to free him. As it turns out, it is, in fact, a mission to kill him, because The Twelve cannot be sure that he has not succumbed to the gang’s torture. In any case, he is compromised. Having Lara at her side when Villanelle finds Konstantin sitting badly injured in a chair, she has no choice but killing him. Otherwise, Lara would have killed her. The second volume spends many pages on describing how Villanelle and Lara go about killing the chief of the gang that had abducted Konstantin. More pages, however, are spent on describing how Villanelle kills a right-wing agitator who has come together with likeminded friends in a resort in the Alpes that can be reached only by helicopter. Villanelle hides military-grade high-level explosives in the target’s dildo. Unfortunately, he enters his room when she is still in there. The detonation has the intended effect of ripping the target to pieces, but Villanelle is also badly injured by the shockwave of the explosion. She spends many weeks in a hospital. All the while, Eve Polastri continues her inquiry. Eve had gotten hold of that person in MI5 who was supposed to be paid by The Twelve. She interrogates him in a secret camp but is called back to London because somebody had broken into her flat. Eve takes that traitor with her back to London but is stopped by a police officer on a motorcycle. As it turns out, this officer is none else than Villanelle. She lets Eve continue her trip, taking the guy with her. He finds his premature end by a vicious hit by a police baton, followed by throwing him into a river.

Eve has been pressuring her MI6 superior to let her travel to Moscow to interview one of his contacts from the time he was stationed as the MI6 chief in Russia. With great hesitation, he finally yields to her persistent requests. She spends the time before her appointment strolling through a park, noticing that she was followed. When she enters a train station, she sees an old man with a box of kittens in front of him. On the spur of the moment, she bends down to have a look. In that second, she hears a muzzled sound and feels a bullet going through her hair smashing into the face of the old man, instead of killing her. It turns out that the shooter was Lara; she is apprehended by Russian security officers who had shadowed Eve. The attempt showed that The Twelve had become unnerved by Eve’s persistence in pursuing Villanelle and finding out who The Twelve were. Thus, the new handler of Villanelle, Anton, tasks her with travelling to London again to kill Eve, not knowing that this would not be a purely professional kill for her. After all, both women had been engaged in mutual fascination that showed some signs of tentative courtship. Moreover, it had become clear (not to Eve, who is a bit slow and naïve) that her superior at MI6 also worked for The Twelve. He had hired Eve precisely to check how strong the protection wall between The Twelve and the outside world was. Not knowing this true intention, Eve had achieved too much. And since the first attempt at killing her in Moscow had been unsuccessful, now the time had come for Villanelle to do the job. Villanelle, though, also knows that she will be killed afterwards because her identity had been compromised. Thus, out of both affection (the affection of a psychopath) and self-interest, she persuades Eve to give up her entire previous life, fake her death, and flee to St. Petersburg.

Die For Me

With this volume, the author switches from a third-person narration to a first-person narration. Suddenly, it becomes Eve who is the storyteller. Moreover, since she is now together with Villanelle, or Oxana (her real first name), which she now prefers to be called by Eve, the whole story also takes on a decidedly relationship-based tone. It is about two women with two very different backgrounds and two very psychological preconditions (as mentioned, Villanelle really is a psychopath) try to find common ground for their relationship. After all, they really love each other, in their own ways. In St. Petersburg, by chance, they are helped by a former prison companion, now the chief of a subsection of the city’s underworld, of Oxana. Yet, for Dasha’s help, Oxana must kill the old boss of the crime syndicate. This will become the first time that Oxana and Eve cooperate in a killing. In fact, it is Eve who makes the final move to drown the boss. When they have done their job, they are free to go, with new identities and passports. When they are already outside of the building where they had spent the past few months, a sniper (Lara again, as it turns out) kills Dasha’s girlfriend, mistaking her for Eve. A gunfight follows between a group paid for by The Twelve and the underworld group, joined by Oxana and Eve, of course. A few killings on both sides later, Oxana and Eve are taken prisoner. Together with Lara, they are tasked with a mysterious killing of super-VIPs. They are totally isolated, have no phones, nor Internet. For that job, they undergo thorough training in an isolated seaside spot, housed in containers. Before the group travelled to that spot, their group was stopped by police for a passport check. Eve was singled out for an interview, without the others being present. On that occasion, she was asked by her Moscow contact to inform him as soon as she knew what their targets would be. Yet, at the training site, they have no means to communicate with the outside world. Accidentally, Eve notices that Anton, Oxana’s handler, takes notes in a book with a pencil, which he afterwards throws into a box. That’s her chance to write a note, Eve thinks, but she must get that pencil. One night, she tries to get it, but, suddenly, Anton turns up. Eve manages to throw him against some steel furniture and then takes that pencil and pushes it with all the strength she has up one of Anton’s nostrils until it penetrated his brain. Oxana helps her disposing his body into the sea.

            For the job at hand, Eve must team up with Lara. Not only had she tried to kill her twice already, but she also wants to get Oxana, with whom she earlier had a sexual relationship. Lara will be the shooter, while Eve plays the role of the spotter. Without them knowing, their team merely is a diversion from the real job, which is to be done by Oxana, and by a very different approach than that for which they had trained (distance sharp shooting). Oxana is successful in killing the two targets, but subsequently is ostensibly shot and killed by the security forces. Nevertheless, some time later, readers will encounter Eve and Oxana living together in a small apartment in St. Petersburg, paid for by Eve’s Moscow contact in the Russian security apparatus. Eve does online translations, while Oxana has returned to being a competitive university student in linguistics. Naturally, she is older than the other students, and some of the male students cannot help but feeling scared of her at times.

MHN

Nonthaburi, Thailand

26 January 2024/24 March 2024