This Girl’s a Killer

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.)