I first learned about this novel by watching Netflix, which had a series based on the book called Killing Eve. The series stars Jodie Comer as Villanelle, a sociopathic assassin, and Sandra Oh as Eve Polastri, the British spy tasked with bringing Villanelle to justice. Both actors were excellent in their roles, and I watched all four seasons. Reconnecting with Netflix after a period of not watching it, I saw Killing Eve was scheduled to leave in 45 days. I decided to watch it again, but then I thought, No, I will read the book. The book is always better, right?
I don’t know about this adverb always, but I found the novel, Codename Villanelle, a compelling, page-turning tome. I used the word tome deliberately because Codename Villanelle is not the full story but the first chapter in a three-book series. It ended on two cliffhangers, one for Villanelle and the other for Eve, but the action in these pages proved to be tense, emotional, and—dare I say it—beautiful. Since the action is violence, maybe beautiful in the wrong word, but Villanelle dispatched her victims in interesting but believable fashions, and I turned the pages to get to the next assassination.
Does that make me complicit?
One way to look at this story is to compare and contrast the processes the two women used to pursue their goals. Eve is methodical. She begins the novel at MI5, but after she failed to protect a Russian firebrand in England, they fired her. Then MI6 recruited her to continue searching for the female assassin. Her weapon of choice is knowledge. “Data! Data! Data! I can’t make bricks without clay,” Sherlock Holmes says in a short story. Though Holmes was never mentioned in Codename Villanelle—not that I remember, anyway—Eve understood the sentiment. She was not an action hero; she’s a housewife with an interesting career in British intelligence. She was more comfortable hacking computers than loading a pistol. Did she even own a gun?
Villanelle, born Oxana Vorontsova, was comfortable with violence. More than comfortable! She lived in violence! When a problem confronts her, her first thought is violence. Usually involved killing. She was recruited from a Russian jail, where she was awaiting trial for killing three minor gangsters. She liked to stab and dice. Though she trained in firearms and used them to commit her professional hits, she used a machete to kill two of the three gangsters. A machete! Like Eve, she was methodical when came to killing, but in other aspects of her life, she was spontaneous, even whimsical. Except in the killings and other random violence, she was likable.
I am complicit, aren’t I?
What followed was a cat-and-mouse game where the two women become fascinated with each other. At it’s a manhunt—womanhunt—at its heart. Even though Eve didn’t know who Villanelle was, didn’t even know her name, she knew she was on the right trail. Then Villanelle made the hunt personal for Eve, sending her a message that Eve interpreted as a warning. Back off or die?
Eve didn’t heed!
And there was a mysterious international cabal of powerful and wealthy people behind Villanelle’s assassinations, which, to my thinking, was the real culprit of the novel. I suspect that in future Villanelle’s novels, Eve will unravel the identities of the cabal’s members, but that is more speculation than knowledge.
I read Codename Villanelle with my Kindle, but it is also available in bookstores and in other ebook formats. I will read the other two books in the series, but I have other projects I want to do first.
Luke Jennings wrote the book. He is a dance critic and journalist who decided to spy thrillers. In nonfiction, he wrote Danseur: A Portrait of Rudolf Nureyer; Blood Knots: On Fishing, Fear, and Forgiveness; and Bourbon for Breakfast: Living Outside the Stat Box. Not a nonfiction reader, I have read none of them, but Blood Knots intrigues me. The other two books in the Codename Villanelle series are No Tomorrow and The Act of Killing. Excited to see how the story ends, I will read them later this year.
Codename Villanelle is a tense but entertaining spy novel.
