Kill For Me Kill For You

I have read most of Steve Cavanagh’s novels and enjoyed almost all of them, with Thirteen, The Liar and The Plea probably my favourites. I have been less impressed with more recent efforts, but he has come back in style with this page-turner.

Two women, Amanda and Rebecca, meet at a therapy session. Both are hurting, having lost children in separate paedophile attacks, at different times. Both know the identity of the attackers but, together with a sympathetic police unit, have been unable to establish proof beyond a reasonable doubt. Their real names are not disclosed during the sessions, but the women form a clandestine friendship, exchange circumstances and begin to plot solutions to their problems.  

Both are in turmoil partly for the loss of their children and partly because so little progress has been made in securing the justice they seek. Amanda, in fact, is hampered in continuing her own investigations as she has a restraining order against her. She can no longer be anywhere near the accused in her case.

Eventually, the women hit upon a magic plan and conspire to execute it. Amanda will kill the attacker in Rebecca’s case and vice-versa. With rock-solid alibis put in place for each of them as the natural suspects, they hope to avoid detection. They rationalise the proposed actions as protecting future victims and not as acts of murder.

This seems to be a perfect plan provided both proceed as agreed and provided the backstories shared by the women are true.

A separate thread runs throughout the book, inviting the reader to believe it may be related. Ruth has been viciously attacked in a home invasion and subsequent surgery means she can no longer have children. She is somewhat lucky to still be alive as her attacker fled during the attack on hearing sirens nearby. A word of warning with this thread, as it is not current day. That was not clear to me until pretty late, so I either missed the messaging or the matter was not signalled properly by the author.

The book is written in the third person and the chapters rotate between the main characters. So we have some quite fantastic cliff-hanger chapter endings. Given the rotations, therefore, it is quite some time before you are able to see how the respective characters have fared.

There are twists galore and Cavanagh is brilliant at elevating the "what is going on here?" factors throughout the novel. I thought I may have had things worked out, only to find that my views couldn’t be right because I hadn't even reached the halfway mark of the book. Even in relating the above plot elements, I have necessarily avoided revealing more relevant story ingredients.

A book of this type will carry a ridiculous moment or two and that applies here. Ruth positively identifies her attacker in a restaurant while dining with her husband, Scott. She panics and doesn’t tell him immediately. When she does, Scott says they shouldn’t contact the police, despite the person still being in the restaurant. Up until then, however, their whole focus had been on having the police engage more. So they go the DIY route instead. Some smaller matters are also left open and this may not please everybody.

In short, however, Cavanagh delivers a helluva ride here, albeit with quite some licence.