The Plotters by Kim Un-su

I picked a Russian cover because I like it more, and I think it suits better for the book.

My bookshelf for Asian readathon in local audiobook provider is like "50 shades of heavy themes", so I chose something the least heavy: a noir thriller by South Korean author (yes, I have questionable reading choices). Usually, I don't read noir books, I've read a couple of them long ago and I remember all of them being "here is our broody protagonist drinking whiskey in the bar at night while it is raining outside, he is depressed because femme fatal betrayed him and all the gangs are on his tale, he has no friends and now only his toxic masculinity is his drinking buddy". 

But this shit is good. 

It's a story about a conflict in the sphere of contract assassinations in Seoul. A younger crime boss wants to take over an older crime boss, and our main character, Reseng, a hitman working for an older crime boss (who is also his stepfather) is caught in the middle of this conflict. All this drama is mixed with beautifully absurd scenes, where criminals are like "Oh, I remember these good old days when we killed powerful politicians, and now we kill prostitutes, what a shame!", and this scene where the main character sitting in the room with his target, they drink together, and his target tells him stories about his father. Kim Un-su's humor mostly dark, and there are a lot of scenes full of irony (I presume he subtly mocks morbid seriousness of traditional noir).

And now let's talk about characters. 

On the one hand, Reseng is a typical noir male character: he is a tough guy who takes weapons with him everywhere, he has an emotional capacity of a snail, he drinks and smokes. On the other hand, the author interestingly presents him. Reseng is this passive character who just lives in the way other people want him to live: he follows orders by Old Raccoon, his stepfather and boss, on the work he needs to do everything plotters want him to do because they plan every high-ranking contract assassination. There is his flashback, where he lies down in the small town for months, and he dates a woman, his coworker from his temporary job on factory, and he just numbly follows her way of living. Kim Un-su pushes Reseng out of his regular life to make him do something different, to think out of the box - and he has an existential crisis now. Kim Un-su leaves Reseng with himself, without other people to look on, and there is an extremely rare occasion when nobody gives Reseng orders. It turns out to be very interesting. 

Other characters are very vivid and weird in a good way. They are like these memorable characters from movies, they seem to be a bit of caricature, but I think it's a part of Kim Un-su's writing style and suits very well with the text. Also, the second part of the book has a very interesting female character, I definitely didn't expect this from a noir thriller. Tbh I was more worried about her than about the main character (well, mostly because I was sure how Reseng will end up, and I was right). 

Kim Un-su is particularly good in depicting criminals in the way that neither demonizes them nor excuse their behavior: all characters of the book seem to be normal people, not some sadistic assholes, but at the same time they are criminals who justify their actions by saying that they are just doing their work, and there always will be organized crime, so why they should be bothered by their actions? Also, Kim Un-su doesn't divide characters to "our good honorable criminals" and "their bad despicable criminals", and shows us how crimes with "honorable" purpose are as much damaging for a character as "regular" ones (of course none of these characters are poor guys who just stole a loaf of bread, they are on the top of the organized crime food chain).

Of course, there is violence in the book, and fights are pretty graphic, but at the same time, Kim Un-su doesn't seem to savor it to shock a reader. The pace of the book seems to be pretty slow in the first half, and I think it's done purposefully, because it is a character-driven story, and the author makes us know Reseng more. 

Also, Russian translation has an extremely colorful swearing, I was pleasantly surprised to see it instead of regular 2-3 common swearing words. 

5 out of 5 stars, I really loved it.