Thanks to Atlantic Books and NetGalley for the Advance Review Copy in exchange for an honest review.

This is a collection of short stories in translation from the original Korean. There's a big interest in Korean noir at the moment and the premise sounds interesting.

The first story in the collection is definitely the strongest. A serial killer with Alzheimer's is an interesting concept but I wasn't sure how well I felt it was executed. The slow disintegration of the narrator's mind was portrayed pretty well but good lord it was frustrating to read. Maybe that was the point?

The other stories really weren't very memorable to me. They were enjoyable enough but I wouldn't rush to recommend this to anyone.

Overall a quick and enjoyable read but nothing that set my world on fire.

This is a collection of short stories of murders. I really enjoyed some more than others, which is usual for a story collection.
But, overall it was a really good collection.
Thanks a lot to NG and the publisher for this copy.

Diary of a Murderer is a solid and intriguing collection of short stories each with a different focus and oftentimes genre from award-winning South Korean sensation, Kim Young-ha. The four stories that comprise the book are diverse and create some fascinating dynamics between some of the characters featured, and Mr Young-ha is a mighty talented genre-spanning/pan-genre writer whose plots were engaging with each separate tale being written superbly well. Of course, the age-old issue we tend to discover time and time again with anthologies rears its ugly head once more here; some of the stories are better or more suited to your tastes than others. That said, I feel there is a little something to capture the imagination of anyone in this strange and exotic collection.

It really showcases Young-ha's incredible versatility as writing in so many different genres and sub-genres is not exactly a feat many writers can achieve successfully or pull off with the considerable aplomb that the author manages here. Korean-English translator Krys Lee also deserves an honourable mention as it is widely recognised that the care taken over the translation can be so powerful that the book can be a resounding success or failure on that bone/point of contention alone and I felt sufficient care and due diligence was taken here. This was far from a conventional taster; filled with dark, unsettling, profoundly atmospheric scenes and written in rich prose laced with humour as black and bleak as the starless sky.

This is a deeply quirky and somewhat bizarre book of stories and given my love of weird Asian surrealist literature this was right from the get-go straight up my alley. It was certainly not straightforward, boring or lacklustre; I found myself a bit like a child at Christmas swiftly discovering and uncovering surprises. I loved not knowing what was around the corner in each of the stories. It's safe to say that this selection has piqued my interest enough to want to check out more of his back catalogue and I have already purchased his other titles in English. I indeed hope that his other novels will follow suit in the future. Many thanks to Atlantic for an ARC.

An interesting selection of murderous tales. I enjoyed some of the stories more than others, as is always the way with a collection.

The title story, in particular, was just unbelievably good. I think an apt description for this book could be: nothing is quite as it seems. I think with the exception of the last story I really liked or even loved all the stories in the book and the last story was just not my cup of tea. I love the sense of the inevitable, it is almost as if it does not matter what the characters do, there was no other way the story could have gone. Diary of a Murderer will stay with me for a long time.

I struggled with this book to be honest, this does not mean I found it bad by any counts but the style was hard work for me. However the stories were interesting and I loved the story about a serial killer with dementia and thought the story was very clever in the way it developed and would make a really good dark and creepy film I think. The other stories were interesting but not really my cup of tea if I’m honest.

I liked the first story most of all, but even that one became a bit long and repetitive towards the end. I couldn't even become interested in the other ones. The author focused mostly on telling the stories of horrible people that sometimes are not in full possession of their mental faculties and if that was interesting to read once, it quickly became too much.
Thank you to Atlantic Books and NetGalley for this DRC.