Thursday, February 5, 2015

The Kind Worth Killing-Peter Swanson

The Kind Worth Killing
Peter Swanson
Morrow, Feb 3 2015, $25.00
ISBN: 9780062267528

In a Heathrow bar while their flight to Logan is delayed, affluent Bostonian businessman Ted Severson meets Lily Kintner, an archivist at the city’s western suburb Winslow College.  Perhaps it is the gin or just his rage, but he tells his new drinking buddy that he obsesses over murdering his wife Miranda for cheating on him.  An experienced killer who has turned death into an art form, Lily calmly offers to take care of his spouse.

In Boston, Ted and Lily begin meeting to develop their execution plan.  At the same time BPD Detective Henry Kimball investigates Lily who he believes is at the center of several homicides.  However, as Ted gets to know his accomplice, he begins to believe he stepped out of the frying pan into the fire and knows what he must do to extinguish the flame before it engulfs him.

Starting with the irony of Lily reading Patricia Highsmith’s The Two Faces of January, this contemporary rendition of Strangers on a Train is a terrific twisting crime thriller.  Rotating perspective between the psychopath, the desperate husband (who soon will learn what desperate truly means), the obsessed cop, and the wife; this is a great character-driven suspense.


Harriet Klausner

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