SHORTLISTED FOR THE CWA DAGGER FOR CRIME FICTION IN TRANSLATION 2024

'It's a clever book ... [Im Seong-sun] offers readers his razor-sharp observations on consumerism, capitalism and what it means to feel anonymous' M.W. Craven
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Sometimes work can be murder...

The Consultant is very good at his job. He creates simple, elegant, effective solutions for… restructuring. Nothing obvious or messy. Certainly nothing anyone would ever suspect as murder.

The ‘natural deaths’ he plans have always gone well: a medicine replaced here, a mechanism jammed there. His performance reviews are excellent. And it’s not as though he knows these people.

Until his next ‘customer’ turns out to be someone he not only knows but cares about, and for the first time, he begins to question the role he plays in the vast, anonymous Company. And as he slowly begins to understand the real scope of their work, he realises just how easy it would be for the Company to arrange one more perfect murder...

But how far will he go to escape The Company? And how far will they go to stop him?

The electrifying first novel from award-winning Korean thriller-writer Im Seong-Sun – now in English for the first time – combines the tension of the best crime fiction with searing social criticism to present a searing take-down of global corporate life.

The Consultant is not only a hugely entertaining book, it’s a clever book. As the morally ambiguous consultant goes about his business of arranging natural deaths to streamline corporate restructuring, he offers readers his razor-sharp observations on consumerism, capitalism and what it means to feel anonymous. It’s also damn funny -- M. W. Craven author of the Sunday Times bestselling Washington Poe series
This tale of an accidental accomplice to serial murder spellbindingly combines the eerily affectless, morally ambiguous tone of a Patricia Highsmith novel with John Dickson Carr’s fecundity in devising “impossible” crimes * Telegraph *
An epic satire of society and power, The Consultant charms and shocks, luring you in to its sizzling plot with no mercy, until you're petrified of how it can possibly end. A blistering indictment of our modern world, this thriller will make you question everything. Brilliant -- Eve Smith
An intriguing premise, cleverly executed, makes for a brilliant read. For The Consultant, a killer who never meets his victims, it all starts to go wrong when he’s told to kill someone he knows. Darkly funny, with a fascinating protagonist, it’s excellent! -- Guy Morpuss, author of Five Minds and Black Lake Manor
Wow … Such a fresh take. Perfect murders in the imperfect world of business and power. Quietly and stylishly told. There’s an honesty in the simplicity and brutality that is enlightening and thought-provoking. I’ll be thinking about it for a while -- Will Carver
A spicy and pacey Korean crime novel in translation… the reader is brought along on a thrilling journey that probes the cracks in capitalism by exploring what people would really do for money * Huffington Post, 23 Brilliant New Books for 2023 To Get Your Reading List Started *
Consultant unfurls from the perspective of a first-person narrator who writes scenarios of perfect crimes. It examines ... the violence of modern anonymity and capitalism. * Readers News *
The details and specifics of murder consulting are intriguing, and the plot propelled by its cerebral narrative and reasoning is refreshing ... it's a page turner, reminiscent of the American show, CSI. -- Segye Ilbo Literary Prize Judges
These facts about Sung-soon Lim might astound you ... Every book of his boasts a drastically different sensibility, prose, and subject matter. His world building is unparalleled, his prose precise, and you can see the echo of extensive research that must have gone into the storytelling. * Channel Yes *
[The Consultant] is toweringly the most interesting of the autumn bunch ... beautifully crafted, witty, slick novel has a profound meta-physical basis * Tablet *

Im Seong-sun's writing career took off with his Segye Literary Award winning novel, The Consultant, in 2010. Ever since, he's written an array of critically acclaimed, diverse fiction and nonfiction, such as a short story collection The Sheeple Wandering a Gallery and their Predators, novels Moon Geunyoung Is in Danger, Rather Kind People Live Here, The Arctic Ocean, The Paragon of Self Improvement, and Ouroboros, and recently, an essay collection Third Wheel of No Use. In 2019, he received the Young Writer’s Award and the Korean Sci-fi Award.

An Seon Jae (aka Brother Anthony of Taizé) was born in England in 1942. He studied at the Queen’s College in Oxford. He joined the Community of Taizé in 1969. He has been living in Korea since 1980, and taught English literature at Sogang University, where he is now an emeritus professor, until he retired in 2007. He is also a chair-professor at Dankook University. He has translated works by many major contemporary Korean writers, mostly poetry, publishing well over 50 volumes. He served as President of the Royal Asiatic Society (Korea) for ten years and is now its President Emeritus. He was awarded an Honorary MBE in 2015. His home page URL is http://anthony.sogang.ac.kr/