Just Jennifer

The Kind Worth Killing by Peter Swanson (William Morrow, February 2015)

In classic Hitchcock or Patricia Highsmith style, Peter Swanson’s sophomore offering (after The Girl with a Clock for a Heart) starts when two apparent strangers meet in the lounge at Heathrow airport, share some gin martinis and begin to plot a murder: Ted Severson thought he was happily married and that this beautiful wife Miranda loved him for more than his millions of dollars.  Not so, he learns when he sees Miranda and the general contractor who is building the Severson’s---at least Miranda’s---dream house in Maine, having sex while going over the plans.  Now Ted is angry, angry enough to tell Lily, the young woman he thinks he has just met for the first time, that he would like to kill his wife.  Lily takes Ted at this word and offers to help make Ted’s dream come true: but, as with many things in life, this is an offer that is too good to be true. Lily has a past---and present---full of secrets, secrets that Ted should have taken the time to learn before agreeing to let this beguiling young woman help set up a plot to murder his wife and starting to play her dangerous and deadly game.  With a plot as intelligent and graceful as Lily herself, readers will quickly find themselves down the rabbit hole, not sure where the next twist or turn is or when it will be coming.  As the plot unfolds, secrets are revealed and new plots begin to formulate inside the players’ heads----or do they? Have there been deeper, more devious plots all along?  Reality and opportunity soon become impossible to separate in this breathtaking journey.  Do not start this book unless you have plenty of time to see it through until the last surprising sentence that will leave evil grins on the faces of many.