Title: BEFORE SHE KNEW HIM
Expected publication: out now
My Rating: 🌟🌟🌟🌟
Book Description:
Hen and her husband Lloyd have settled into a quiet life in
a new house outside of Boston, Massachusetts. Hen (short for Henrietta) is an
illustrator and works out of a studio nearby, and has found the right meds to
control her bipolar disorder. Finally, she’s found some stability and peace.
But when they meet the neighbors next door, that calm begins to erode as she spots a familiar object displayed on the husband’s office shelf. The sports trophy looks exactly like one that went missing from the home of a young man who was killed two years ago. Hen knows because she’s long had a fascination with this unsolved murder—an obsession she doesn’t talk about anymore, but can’t fully shake either.
Could her neighbor, Matthew, be a killer? Or is this the beginning of another psychotic episode like the one she suffered back in college, when she became so consumed with proving a fellow student guilty that she ended up hurting a classmate?
But when they meet the neighbors next door, that calm begins to erode as she spots a familiar object displayed on the husband’s office shelf. The sports trophy looks exactly like one that went missing from the home of a young man who was killed two years ago. Hen knows because she’s long had a fascination with this unsolved murder—an obsession she doesn’t talk about anymore, but can’t fully shake either.
Could her neighbor, Matthew, be a killer? Or is this the beginning of another psychotic episode like the one she suffered back in college, when she became so consumed with proving a fellow student guilty that she ended up hurting a classmate?
My musings:
Peter Swanson’s thriller THE KIND WORTH KILLING is one of my
all-time favourite thrillers, so I was very interested to find out what he has
in store for us with his latest book BEFORE SHE KNEW HIM, which came out
earlier this month.
The premise is very intriguing: Hen and Lloyd are invited to
dinner at their new neighbours’ house to welcome them to the neighbourhood.
During a tour of the house, Hen spies a fencing trophy on a shelf in the home
office. It bears an uncanny resemblance to an item that belonged to a young man
who had been brutally murdered in their old neighbourhood. What makes it even
more suspicious is that Matthew, her neighbour, works at the school the murder
victim attended at the time. Curious, Hen asks about the trophy and is fobbed
off with the flippant explanation that Matthew had acquired the item at a
garage sale. But Hen doesn’t believe in coincidences. All her alarm bells are
jingling. When the trophy has gone from the shelf at her next visit to the
house, she is convinced that Matthew was somehow involved in the murder. Could
he even be the killer?
Swanson is a master at character development and straight
away we know that Hen is not the most reliable narrator. Suffering from bipolar
disorder and with a history of psychotic episodes, her claims that her
neighbour may be a murderer are instantly dismissed by those around her. Even
as the reader, I was often questioning her actions, which seemed impulsive and
often downright dangerous. However, with Hen Swanson gives us a well rounded,
multi-layered character whose history of mental illness is well portrayed and
who drove the story for me. I would really love to see Hen’s artwork, which
sounded as intriguing as her character herself. I soon found out that each and
every person in the novel had something to hide. In usual Swanson style, I
hence embarked on a rollercoaster ride of a series of “unfortunate events”
engendered by our cast of dysfunctional people.
I think that Swanson’s talent lies in making even his most
dysfunctional characters likeable. It is hard to explain how much I rooted for
the murderous Lily in THE KIND WORTH KILLING
without sounding like a psychopath myself, but I freely admit that I really
liked her. Similarly, despite the events unfolding in his latest book, I found
all characters strangely compelling. Except perhaps for one. With good reason,
as I later found out. But I am not giving any more away here! Fans of the
author will be pleased that his latest book is not only clever and original,
but also contains the hallmark twists that mark his earlier works. You may need
some slight suspension of disbelief to fully buy the whole story, but it’s
fiction, right?
I admit that this book started off a bit more slowly than I
had expected and it took me a little while to find my feet. However, by about
the 20% mark I knew that I was going to be in for a treat, and was not
disappointed.
All in all, if you like dark twisted thrillers driven by a
cast of dysfunctional characters, than this one is definitely for you.
Thank
you to Edelweiss and William Morrow for the free electronic copy of this novel and
for giving me the opportunity to provide an honest review.
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