Entering Eve's radar is the awareness of a highly able female assassin operating globally. Initially Eve rejects the need for protection of the Russian but changes her mind. We encounter Eve Polastri, and her deputy, Simon Mortimer, working for MI5. Her second hit brings her to London, where an elaborate plan is devised that targets a charismatic Russian fascist leading a growing movement. There is a detailed breakdown of her abilities, her observational skills, reactive speeds and sensory powers are phenomenal. We come to see just how talented and cold a killer she really is, although she does go off the page when it came to her instructions.

Villanelle's first hit takes her to Palermo and a much feared Mafia boss with a host of enemies. She is, however, superb at learning to simulate emotions for power, sex and for exposing the vulnerabilities of her targets. We learn of her personality, she is a sociopath with an inability to access human emotions such as empathy or compassion.

The first story gives the backstory of Oxana and her conversion to Villanelle. The stories are interconnected with recurring characters. Konstantin is the representative of the 12 powerful men who sanction Villanelle's hits. Oxana becomes erased with the cover story that she dies, and she acquires a whole new persona, Villanelle, and trained to become an extraordinary assassin in strong echoes of Nikita. This lands her in prison, where she is approached with a deal. Ths is a collection of 4 kindle single stories about Oxana Vorontsova, a young woman who kills the men responsible for the death of her father. As a journalist he has written for The Observer, Vanity Fair, the New Yorker and Time. 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.

And when she’s tasked with the elimination of a senior Mafia boss, it’s clear that the job is going to have to be carried out at close quarters… The rewards of her new life are spectacular, but the risks are deadly. Recruited as an assassin on behalf of a secretive global power-elite, she is reborn as the beautiful, lethal Villanelle. Half a world away, Oxana’s potential has been noted. But as a string of unnerving incidents attests, the signs were always there. Not quite the behaviour you’d expect of a star linguistics student at one of Russia’s top universities. One man with his throat slashed to the bone, two shot in the face. In an isolated remand centre in the Ural Mountains, Oxana Vorontsova awaits trial for murder.

Killing eve book series