Since they shot her at point-blank range while she was being kissed, she confused the pain of death with that of love." So begins Rosario Tijeras, Jorge Franco's eponymous novel of a violent, violated woman on the run in 1980s Medellin, Colombia. Her name-evoking the rosary and scissors--bespeaks her conflict as a woman who becomes a contract killer to insulate herself from the random violence of the streets.