Wildfire signs Mackay’s A Serial Killer’s Guide to Marriage

Wildfire has acquired A Serial Killer’s Guide to Marriage by Asia Mackay, with fiction publisher Jack Butler buying world rights from Alice Lutyens at Curtis Brown. Publication is scheduled for July 2024.

The novel follows Hazel and Fox, a perfectly average married couple with a toddler living in the suburbs. Except for one small thing: they’re serial killers. The synopsis says: “For years they made the perfect partnership, slaying bad men of all shapes and sizes across the world. But when Hazel found out she was going to have a baby, everything changed.

“They had to try being a normal family and put an end to killing once and for all. Until now, that is. Because Hazel has a secret she’s keeping from her husband: she’s started killing again. And this time, she’s not sure she can stop.”

Butler said: “From literally the first paragraph of Asia’s incredible thriller I was 100% in. This book has everything I look for in a page-turner: a dangerously sexy set of characters – imagine if Mr and Mrs Smith were serial killers – absolutely riveting pace and a hilariously dark sense of humour. Dropping these killers into the powder-keg of domesticated suburbia, replacing meticulously-planned murder with childcare and dinner parties is a masterstroke, and I read the whole thing on the edge of my seat waiting for it to explode.

“I’m over the moon to be working with Asia and cannot wait for readers to meet Haze and Fox. You won’t forget them in a hurry – though if you see them coming your way, please run in the other direction.”

Mackay is the author of two novels published by Bonnier. After a career in TV in China, she returned to London where she worked for the likes of Ewan McGregor and Charley Boorman, and subsequently completed a Faber Academy course. Her debut novel Killing It was the runner-up in Richard and Judy’s Search for a Bestseller competition and runner-up/exceptionally recognised for the Comedy Women In Print prize.

She said: “I loved writing A Serial Killer’s Guide To Marriage and Wildfire is the perfect home for it. Jack and the team straightaway got what it was all about and laughed in all the right places – I’m thrilled to be working with them. Getting married, becoming a parent… it’s a whole new life that usually involves compromise and sacrifice – it made me wonder how would a knife-wielding couple, living a glamorous dangerous life, cope if forced to give it all up? Could their marriage survive moving to suburbia and suppressing their killer instincts? I hope people enjoy reading about Hazel and Fox as much as I did writing them.”