"Truthfully, I don't think murder is necessarily as bad as people make it out to be. Everyone dies. What difference does it make if a few bad apples get pushed along a little sooner than God intended? And your wife, for example, seems like the kind worth killing."
When Ted Severson meets Lily Kintner in a London airport bar, he is taken by her unique beauty and enjoys their playful, carefree banter while their mutual flight to Boston is delayed. And as one martini turns to two (and then more), once their plane takes off, they begin to play a game of absolute truth. No judgment.
Perhaps it's the liquor that loosens his tongue, or Lily's presence, but Ted begins to reveal the problems he's experiencing with his wife, Miranda, and that he's pretty certain she's having an affair. Knowing a divorce will cost him a great deal of money and more than a little bit of humiliation, he jokes that it would just be easier to kill Miranda. When Lily first replies, "I think you should," and then later adds, "I'd like to help," he's utterly surprised, a bit freaked out...and more than a little intrigued.
The two begin to devise a seemingly foolproof plan, but Ted can't help but wonder whether Lily is actually serious about it, or if somehow she'll end up trapping him somehow. But what Ted doesn't know is that there is far more mystery to Lily than he can even imagine. And then everything gets a little bit more complicated...
I'm going to stop my description at this point for fear of giving anything away, although this is a book that succeeds both because of its intricate plot as well as the strength of Peter Swanson's writing. This isn't a book that thrives on surprises, although Swanson throws in a few. I just found the characters so compelling, both the ones I liked and the ones I didn't, and I really wanted to know exactly how he'd tie everything up. And now, of course, I'd love to know what happens next.
I don't want to hype this, but this is definitely a book worth reading!
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