What do contract killers charge? In search of an answer, Jenny Kleeman tells us, she tried hard to obtain the contact details of “some of Britain’s most notorious murderers”, so she could write to them in prison about “their pricing structure”. She later found a flamboyant reformed American hitman who was willing to talk.
How much do people insure their lives for? Kleeman considers the stories of a man who faked his own death for the insurance; his son, who was flabbergasted when “the father he had spent eight months mourning” suddenly turned up at the door; and the fraud investigators who “hunt down the undead”. Her vivid and disquieting book eventually explores 12 different ways we assess “the price of [a] life”, through bizarre and poignant individual stories interwoven with the reflections of more detached analysts. She speaks to gay men paying for IVF and surrogacy to create a genetically related baby; families involved in hostage negotiations; trafficked Filipina women working as domestic servants; and “body brokers” who sell off cadavers and organs for medical research.
