The Killer Inside by Cass Green
Genre: Psychological thriller, domestic thriller
Read: 4th September 2019
Purchase: Amazon
(release date: 5th September 2019)
★★★ 3.5 stars
How well do you know your loved ones and how far would you go to protect them?
A dark psychological thriller, THE KILLER INSIDE explores this very concept when Elliott, a primary school teacher, discovers his wife Anya may not be the woman he thought she was. Happily married, both are from vastly different backgrounds. Elliott was raised by his mother on a London council estate with his father in prison while Anya was the privileged - and maybe somewhat entitled - only child of Patrick and Julia. But both harbour guilty secrets.
Anya's parents adore Elliott and have always made him feel welcome. But a part of him always feels shut out as if he is not privy to the threefold strong unit that is Anya and her parents. So why is it Anya always goes running to them when something goes wrong? It is not uncommon for her to do so, leaving Elliott excluded and somewhat mystified. But Anya is the product of her parents' overindulgence, always giving her what she so desired and fixing any problems that she encountered. And it is a habit that has continued into her adulthood and marriage.
But Elliott has his own worries when he inadvertently makes an enemy of one of the dads at the school he teaches. Strange things begin to happen beyond Anya's distant behaviour as he is run off his bicycle and they are woken in the night by a brick being thrown through the window. Elliott wonders if Lee Bennett (the dad from the school) is behind it, having spent some time in prison he seemed the sort. But it's Anya's behaviour that puzzles me. If a brick was thrown through my window at 3am, I wouldn't be brushing it off, insisting that the police not be called and then promptly falling to sleep without a care while my husband is left sleepless to deal with it. I'd be frantic and unable to sleep. But Anya clearly didn't have the worries she claimed that plagued her. Of course Anya ran off to her parents, citing feeling unwell, where she stayed for the next several days.
Then one day Elliott decides to surprise Anya at work in London for lunch. But when he arrives he discovers she hasn't been there for at least a week with her employer granting her more time if needed during her "bereavement". What bereavement? Elliott is both puzzled and furious. What exactly is going on? What secrets is she keeping? Of course, her parents are privy to the entire spiel - why is he not surprised? Just how well does he know the woman he married?
Irene is a 73 year old widow living in Cambridge whose son Liam disappeared in 2003 without explanation beyond a postcard citing he "needed to sort his head out and don't try and find me". She hasn't heard anything from him since. Her worries intensify when her eldest son Michael neglects to visit as he usually does, and she hasn't heard from him for several weeks. In a silent panic, Irene decides to visit Michael's flat but upon arrival finds no response. She is directed to a free spirited woman called Rowan in an adjoining flat who may have some answers as to her son's whereabouts. But Rowan is worried too. She hasn't heard from Michael either. Her only clue is that he claimed he might finally know what happened to Liam.
Desperate for answers, Irene seeks Rowan's help in gaining access to Michael's flat upstairs. Inside, she finds nothing of real value apart from some receipts to a cafe in Casterbourne in Kent. Puzzled, Irene decides to take the train to Kent with a photo of Michael in the hope that someone somewhere has seen her son. But is she prepared for what she may find when she gets there?
Told primarily from the two perspectives of Elliott and Irene, we are also given a glimpse of the past with Liam in 2003 about halfway through. From Liam's narrative we are then given the remaining pieces that lead to his disappearance in 2003.
THE KILLER INSIDE is not entirely a slow burn as it is a slow starter, as for the first half of the book we are seemingly thoroughly confused as to how Elliott and Irene's stories even relate. Generally, for me, a book that takes this long to make sense is discarded long before it begins to. I can't say it is entirely engaging to begin with either because I really just wanted to smack Elliott for his naivete and strangle Anya for her pure selfishness. I felt more invested in Irene's story, rather than the saga that was Elliott and Anya, and yet we saw so little of her. However, once you reach that 50% mark, it all begins to fall into place and it's a race to the finish. I found it to be reminiscent of "Gone Girl" in which the first half uninteresting but the second half riveting.
Well-plotted throughout, despite the first half being slow and thoroughly confusing, THE KILLER INSIDE is somewhat addictive as the reader watches the story unfold in the same way one would witness a car crash - unable to look away.
My thoughts on THE KILLER INSIDE are as complex as the characters within it, but overall, once you hit that 50% mark it is a race to the end. My favourite character was Irene and I would have liked to see a little more of her. I really felt for her as her story unfolded. Elliott and Anya just did my head in. It is clear from the beginning that Anya is a psychopath. There is no other way to describe her. I couldn't understand what Elliott saw in her.
In some ways, it seems the reader knows the direction the story is taking. But then when all the secrets are finally revealed...where does that leave them all?
As secrets and lies are unraveled, loyalties are challenged as complex characters manipulate the outcome. Which begs the question - how well do we really know our loved ones?
I would like to thank #CassGreen, #NetGalley and #HarperCollinsUK for an ARC of #TheKillerInside in exchange for an honest review.
No comments:
Post a Comment