Readers Guide for Keep Them Close

My Readers Guide for Keep Them Close will have Jen’s Quick Take plus a plot summary, character list, and Q and A! Let’s discuss this very twisty new suspense story for Summer 2026!

Readers Guide With Keep Them Close

Jen’s Quick Take on Keep Them Close

• I really loved Look Closer by David Ellis (it’s long, but so twisty and smart) so I have been waiting for a new book by David Ellis
• Keep Them Close did not disappoint! If you love books with twists and turns and characters who are unpredictable, this book is for you!
• Yes, it does have the ever-popular multi-POV and every-shifting timeline (I actually made a short chronological timeline to help me keep it straight, which I will share!) BUT for a book like this, you need those tools to make it work.
• A fun summer read which will keep you glued to the pages!
• Publication date: June 30, 2026 by Putnam Books. Thanks so much to them for the advance copy!

Character List for Keep Them Close

• Allison Rankin Brice: lawyer and former DA
• Finley Brice: her husband
• Luke Rankin: Allison’s brother; former baseball prodigy; now coach
• Grayson Brice: Allison and Fin’s son
• Trinity Castro: Luke’s girlfriend
• Anna Cortese: woman Fin is cheating with (not a spoiler)
• Jennifer “Harp” Harper: Allison’s investigator (work and personal)
• Sergeant Louise Pratt: police officer
• George “Cutty” Sarkisian: Louise’s partner
• Bruce Ghadaili: DA
• Aaron Starks: midlevel associate at Allison’s firm
• Marlow Luckett: road rage guy

Timeline of Important Events in Keep Them Close

Decades ago: When Luke was fourteen, he was hit while playing a bike racing game with his friends, ruining his promising sports career

June 2025: Fin’s affair and the car accident with Marlow

January 2026: Fin hurts his knee. His affair stops as he recovers, then restarts.

February 2026: Luke arrested

April 2026: Fin found dead

Plot Summary for Keep Them Close

The plot has a lot of back and forth in time! And my notes are a little scribbly, so if you have questions or think I got something wrong, please leave a comment!

June 2025

Allison is parked outside an apartment where he husband is sleeping with his mistress. The only people who know about this are her brother Luke and her investigator, Harp.

As Allison leaves, she’s followed by a truck in a seeming road rage incident. Alarmed, she heads to the college where Luke works. The man in the truck confronts her with a crowbar and she points a gun at him and then, while trying to escape, hits him with her car.

The next day, Harp calls and says that the road rage guy is alive and thinks a man in a car hit him. Allison has also asked Luke to destroy the surveillance photos (as he works at the college).

April 1 2026

Sergeant Louise Pratt and her partner Cutty are called to a murder scene at a Chicago condo. It’s a man with bruising and a puncture in his neck. The crime scene tech says the murder weapon would have been something like an ice pick. Finley Brice is dead.

11 Weeks Before Fin’s Death

When Fin injures his knee, he stops the affair. But as he recovers, Allison suspects he’s with Anna again. Harp confirms that Fin and Anna are hooking up at an investment property Allison and Fin own in the city.

Luke is running an errand for his girlfriend, Trinity, when he’s pulled over by the cops. They find oxycontin in Trinity’s car.

April 1 2026

Allison says she last saw her husband at 3 pm the day of his death. The DA wonders if Luke’s drug case is connected to Fin’s murder. Luke is arraigned and released on bail.

Luke tells Allison that he’s pleading guilty. She asks him why he’s protecting Trinity and that he might end up in prison.

At Luke’s preliminary hearing, they learn that the police were tipped off about the drugs in the car. Allison tells Luke that it had to be Trinity.

Allison gets the inventory of Trinity’s car from the DA, which includes a thumb drive.

April 7

Harp meets with the detectives and the DA. They ask her why Allison told her to tip off the police.

5 Weeks Before Fin’s Death

Allison planted Trinity’s lipstick (stolen from Luke’s house) in her car AND the Oxycontin, which she obtained by filling Fin’s prescription after his knee injury. She was trying to get Trinity pulled over and arrested, not Luke.

Luke is asked to step down from his coaching job. We also learn that as a teenager and promising athlete, Luke was hit by a driver after he careened into the street during a bike racing game with his friends.

Louise Investigation Day 4

Luke comes in for an interview, where he learns that Allison’s DNA was found on the items in Trinity’s car. Allison refuses to talk to the police.

4 Weeks Before Fin’s Death

Trinity interviews Luke for the documentary she is making about his accident. The driver who hit him had a DUI and went to prison.

Fin also comes over to be interviewed. He was the “gofer” in the game, the one who handed the bikes over the fence so they could race down the hill.

Allison is involved in a work case and tells her colleagues, “we need a villain. Every good story has a villain.”

She’s astonished to get the fingerprint results back on the items in Trinity’s car. They had her own fingerprints on them, even though she wore gloves. That’s because Trinity found the items that Allison put in her car and replaced them.

Two Weeks Before Fin’s Death

Allison finally throws Fin out. She confronts him when he withdraws $50,000 from their joint account. Then Allison is confronted in her garage by road rage man. He wants $25,000 wired to him or he will expose her.

As part of the documentary, Luke and Trinity talk to an expert hired by the woman who hit Luke with her car. The expert tells them Luke’s brakes were cut.

One Week Before Fin’s Death

Fin is still messaging Anna. Also, Luke helped Trinity set Allison up. They made her the villain. Trinity caught Allison planting the drugs in her car on video.

Allison tells Luke that she thinks Trinity might be sleeping with Fin. Luke tells Allison they are through.

Allison goes back to talk to him and make him admit that he wanted to leave his job. He counters back that he was waiting for her to admit that she planted evidence in Trinity’s car. She tells him that if he put drugs in the car, then he’s guilty. She’s recorded him saying that he did. Allison says she will keep her recording secret if he keeps the security footage secret of her encounter with road rage guy.

Harper tells Allison that Trinity is the daughter of Carmela Muller the woman who hit Luke with her car.

When Allison tells Luke this, he says he already knew. And that Trinity wouldn’t have slept with Fin since he cut Luke’s brakes, sending her mother to prison. He also tells her that she missed something important in the police inventory of Trinity’s car.

Allison goes to the photos of the car contents. Luke must mean the thumb drive, which has “school security vid” written on it. It’s the evidence that she hit road rage guy with her car.

Meanwhile, Louise is monitoring Luke and Allison’s texts and see them discussing the thumb drive. The DA mentions that it’s odd that Luke willingly handed over his phone.

Louise Investigation Day 5

Louise finally gets access to the key card data in the condo where Fin was killed. Allison did come to the condo around 2:15 pm. And Fin and Allison’s son Grayson came around 6:45.

Louise gets warrants to seize Allison’s and Grayson’s phones.

March 30

Grayson showed up at the condo in Chicago and saw his father cheating.

Finlay calls Allison and is drunk. He says he knows about the school security video. He wants $2 million.

April 1

Allison goes to the condo. She says their fates are tied together and if she goes to prison, he won’t get anything.

After she drives home, she gets a call from Grayson saying that Fin is dead.

Grayson found Fin, stabbed to death. A panicked Allison calls Luke. Then she gets cleaning supplies and takes off her license plate.

She tells Luke to leave his phone home. She leaves him at her place with her phone and goes to the condo. Grayson is there and says he didn’t do it. She gets him to clean himself up and finds a blue laptop in the fireplace.

Trinity killed Fin.

Allison shoves anything bloody in a trash bag. She fakes some texts from Grayson to Fin. She finds cash in the closet and puts that and the murder weapon in a duffel bag. Then takes Fin’s body out in a luggage cart.

April 1

Allison sends a text from Fin to Trinity, apologizing.

Louise finds Marlow Luckett’s phone in Fin’s car and the money and murder weapon in Fin’s house.

She also finds texts (faked by Allison) suggesting that Marlow was blackmailing Fin.

Allison drove Fin’s car to Marlow’s to suggest that Fin was bringing monty to Marlow and then Marlow stabbed him and dumped his body in a dumpster.

Actually Luke and Allison dropped the voicemail.

April 2

Trinity tells Allison that Fin pushed her agains the window and took her computer.

We learn that Allison is the one who cut Luke’s brakes !!

The school security video on the thumb drive in Luke’s car was of Allison cutting his brakes.

Louise tries to make sense of Fin’s murder. The theory that Allison has created:

• Fin was the one in the road rage accident with Marlow.
• Marlow attacked Allison and made her wire him blackmail money
• Marlow came back for more money
• When Fin was delivering the money, Marlow stabbed him

This plot was VERY COMPLICATED and I waited too long after reading it to write this up, so please put any questions or corrections in the comments! Thanks to Nikki for the first correction as I ALWAYS mix up character names 🙂