Book Notices | The Kind Worth Killing by Peter Swanson / What You Did by Claire McGowan

Peter Swanson, The Kind Worth Killing

Amazon   This book just prompted me to make an actual physical list of must-read authors with Peter Swanson's name on it so I won't run the chance of forgetting how much I loved The Kind Worth Killing. What a wonderful, complex, twist-filled page-turner. It starts with a nod to Strangers on a Train. The movie was directed by Alfred Hitchcock, yes, but the book was written by the wonderful Patricia Highsmith. And when Ted meets Lily in an airport, she's reading a Highsmith novel (Two Faces of January, "Not one of the best"). They talk. Ted's wife is cheating on him. Plans emerge. And it gets more interesting and a lot more complicated from there. It's a great book with, incidentally, a fantastic cover, and with a final paragraph that elicited an audible exclamation of delight from me.

Claire McGowan, What You Did

Amazon   I got this as an Amazon First Reads selection, and I'm glad I did. It kept me interested and guessing to the end. Six friends from college get together for a reunion--two couples, Ali and Mike and Jodi and Callum, and two singles, Karen and Bill. They spend the night drinking and reliving their Oxford days, and everything is great until Karen staggers in from the backyard claiming she was raped by Mike. It's he said/she said, and Mike's wife, Ali, has to choose sides. Things get worse from there. At the same time, there's a ghost in their past: An acquaintance was murdered at the very end of their time at Oxford, and her attacker was never found. Could there be a connection? Anyway, it's a book worth reading.