Review by Booklist Review
Cordelia Black is a charismatic, stylish, and shrewd pharmaceutical rep who has gone to great efforts to put her unhappy origins behind her. She's also a serial killer who murders bad men to protect those they prey on and to satisfy her own blood lust. Cordelia's two great loves are her best friend, Diane, and Diane's 12-year-old daughter, Samantha. So when Diane, who has notoriously bad taste in partners, starts dating a slimeball named Simon, Cordelia goes on high alert. Is Simon just a run-of-the-mill jerk or something more dangerous? Cordelia's code only allows her to kill predators, so she must figure out if Simon really is one. Complicating matters is Cordelia's latest Tinder date, a cute cop who is very interested in her, which could be a problem, to say the least, if he finds out about Cordelia's favorite hobby. Even as some of Cordelia's choices stretch credulity, first-time novelist Wells ratchets up the tension to a fever pitch when an unplanned but necessary kill spins Cordelia's life off its axis, making for a gripping, thrilling read.
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
Wells debuts with a fast, funny look at the travails of Cordelia Black, a Baton Rouge, La., pharmaceutical rep who moonlights as a serial killer. Cordelia's life is carefully constructed: she makes sales by day and dispenses with men who've gotten away with violent crimes by night. In her off hours, she hangs out with her college best friend, Diane, and Diane's 13-year-old daughter, Samantha. But when the company Cordelia works for is threatened with a class-action lawsuit related to a medication's dangerous side effects, her life begins to unravel. While she frets about potential layoffs triggered by the suit, the local news starts using the term "serial killer" when reporting on the missing men she's murdered. To make matters worse, she senses that Diane's smarmy new boyfriend may be cheating on her. Cracking under the pressure, the typically methodical Cordelia commits a murder without much forethought, setting in motion a chain of events that threatens to put her behind bars forever. Wells mines plenty of laughs and thrills from Cordelia's attempts to claw her way to safety, with the darkness of the premise nicely balanced by the novel's fizzy first-person narration. Anyone who's ever wondered what kind of trouble a female Dexter Morgan would get up to is in luck. Agent: Ann Rose, Tobias Literary. (Sept.)
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Review by Kirkus Book Review
A Baton Rouge pharmaceutical sales rep has a side hustle that's somewhat less therapeutic. Life can be stressful for Cordelia Black. She's still haunted by the way her relationship to clingy Joanie Brown turned out all those years ago. She's not happy that the FDA has pulled Bosephan, the medication that's been her biggest seller, off the market. And she instantly takes against her best friend Diane's new boyfriend, Simon, a nurse who works at Mercy Hospital, where Diane is in the accounting department. On the bright side, Cordelia has a happy place she goes to whenever life is too much to bear: She stalks and kills sex abusers and sells their remains to Clarence Elgin of Spirited Gifts, an immoral but entirely legal broker for body parts. Luckily, she possesses a finely honed moral sense--"I had a code. I only killed monsters," she confides--along with a strong will and a gift for organization that keeps her complicated life on track. When she realizes that the Feds may be curious about the samples of Bosephan that have gone missing from her possession because she's been using them to dope her most recent victims, she comes up with a plan. But when she thinks Christopher, the local cop Diane has set her up with, may be getting a little too close for comfort, she must come up with another plan. Then, when something suddenly does go wrong, leading to a cascade of scrapes, misfortunes, and crises, Cordelia must plot anew if she's going to survive this pitch-black comedy for the promised sequel. Rated R for clinically detailed accounts of murder, dismemberment, and body disposal, but sadly, no sex. Maybe next time. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
