If you’ve chosen to pursue a life of crime, that can come with certain complications. The constant pressure of planning high stakes missions and evading capture can take a toll on your mental health and general well-being. Like anyone trying to live their lives and do the best they can in their chosen profession, thieves and killers need to work on their self-care if they want to keep successfully ending lives and stealing fortunes.
How can professional help, help professional killers? Can mantras and meditation get hardened criminals through the ups and downs of their more testing and violent days in the office?
In my book, Self-Help for Serial Killers, married couple Haze and Fox are two (mostly) reformed serial killers who discover something more deadly than murder: a midlife crisis. They have two children, a beautiful home, and a late-night habit of eliminating people who deserve it—they’re having it all, right up until it all starts to fall apart.
After a botched kill leads to Fox struggling with performance anxiety, Haze is left stressed out and picking up the slack. Desperate times call for desperate self-help measures to get them back to their fighting fit selves before the dangerous group they’ve accidentally drawn to their doorstep follow through on their threats to their family.
Soothing music, scented candles and working on yourself might not be something associated with murder and bank heists, but these excellent books also focus on what happens when the wellness world and the criminal world collide.
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Karsten Duss, Murder Mindfully
Björn is a forty-two-year-old high-profile criminal defence attorney whose entire career has been devoted to successfully defending Dragan Sergowicz, a ruthless crime boss and violent killer. Under immense stress from being beholden to such a terrible man and desperate to regain control of his life, Björn turns to mindfulness.
But when he applies these new zen techniques to his chaotic work life, his first major breakthrough is realizing he needs to eliminate his high-profile client. Turning to murder is his best chance of protecting his family time and preserving his newly found mindfulness and work-life balance.
In this intricately plotted satirical thriller Duss hilariously skews the wellness industry, corrupt attorneys, and the cutthroat world of competitive preschool parenting.
Fredrik Backman, Anxious People
A luxury estate agent is hosting an open house viewing at an up-market apartment when a staggeringly incompetent bank robber rushes in and politely takes everyone hostage. As the police gather outside, the anxious strangers huddled within try to make the best of the situation—instead of panic, the apartment is instead filled with bickering, oversharing, and unexpected bonding. The hostages reveal their deepest flaws, secrets, and life anxieties, driving their captor to a full-blown existential crisis alongside them.
Anxious People is a witty, moving comedy about the beautiful mess of being human.
Lawrence Block, Hit Man
John Keller is an ordinary New York City resident who does crosswords, watches television, and visits a therapist when he has a mid-career crisis. He is polite, deeply introspective, and entirely relatable—except for the fact his chosen profession is contract murder.
Hit Man is a linked collection of stories with Keller at the center of each and we’re given such a complete picture of him we start to not only understand but forgive him for his violent occupation. Keller might be an incredibly efficient hitman, but he also collects stamps, frets over the price of earplugs, and frequently turns to his handlers and life coaches to reconcile his mundane personality with his grim profession. He frequently daydreams about retiring to a peaceful life in the countryside.
Block brilliantly pulls off making a ruthless assassin thoroughly charming and deeply sympathetic.
Liane Moriarty, Nine Perfect Strangers
Masha is the enigmatic leader of Tranquillum House, a luxury wellness resort. Nine city-dwelling strangers arrive at Tanquillum to de-stress, sweat out their inner demons and realign their chakras. But Masha is a wellness guru who doesn’t just practice mindfulness, she weaponizes it.
Using the core pillars of a wellness retreat—confiscating phones, restricting food, and mandating silence—she manipulates them into compliance, turning a practice meant for inner peace into a tool for total psychological dominance. The strangers might have come there to find ‘better versions of themselves’ but now they must fight to leave the way they came—alive.
Robert Thorogood, A Meditation on Murder
“Tranquility” is a luxury meditation retreat on the Caribbean island of Saint Marie. Wealthy guests pay to unplug, realign their chakras, and practice absolute presence under the guidance of wellness guru Aslan Kennedy. During a locked-room meditation, Aslan has the guests wear eye masks and noise-cancelling headphones playing meditation tracks to foster true inner peace. A peace that is shattered when Aslan is discovered stabbed to death. They might have all “been present” but they all claim to not know what happened in the room.
Detective Inspector Richard Poole is tasked with unmasking the murderer. Fiercely skeptical of “zen energy,” Poole doesn’t care about auras; he only cares about alibis. To catch the killer, Poole must peel back the retreat’s serene exterior to uncover exactly what everyone is hiding behind the flowery language and chanted mantras.
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