Readers Guide for Ours is a Tale of Murder

Plot Summary for Ours is a Tale of Murder

Location: a suburb in Maryland.

The story opens with three strands: 

Strand One: Klara and Troy

Klara, a lawyer, meets a very intense man named Troy at a work event. Troy then shows up at Clara’s office with flowers to apologize for spilling wine on her after they met.

Klara and Owen begin a relationship and discuss the fact that she isn’t sure she wants children. He does want them, and feels he always gets what he wants. And, what do you know, Klara discovers she’s pregnant! She doesn’t want to tell Troy, but when she doesn’t make partner, she confesses that she’s pregnant  and he proposes.

Troy surprises Clara with a house in the suburbs, which means she has to quit her job. As Klara becomes increasingly unhappy, she learns that Troy has blocked her best friend Zoe on her phone.

After Klara suffers a miscarriage, Troy goes out to pick up a prescription for her. She looks at his computer searches and they are DISTURBING, suggesting that the gave her antibiotics to make her birth control ineffective. And that he’s tracking her phone.  Klara poisons her husband with a dish containing peanuts, which he’s allergic to.

Strand Two: Henry

Meanwhile, Henry watches his neighbor, a married woman he’s obsessed with. He lives with his parents and has a history of stalking. His mom nags him to find a job. He’s glad she doesn’t know that he was fired for harassing Lacey, a woman at work.

Henry creepily follows his neighbor to her OB/GYN appointment.  He finally introduces himself and they learn that they both have the same favorite book: The Cry of the Owl by Patricia Highsmith (more on this later). Henry sneaks into his neighbor’s house and looks at her things. His mother Janet confronts him about his stalking. 

Strand Three: Mary

As Mary packs up her house in preparation for selling it, she worries about her son Owen. Mary recalls Owen’s troubled relationship with his father. From Mary’s memories, we get the feeling that a terrible crime was committed in Mary’s house and Owen lives in the basement. 

BIG PLOT TWIST: Klara and Troy exist only in Kate Harvey’s laptop.

Kate has been writing the story of Klara and Troy for three months, and she’s stuck. After a long day at the computer, she heads downstairs to find her husband Ben. She’s in shock when she discovers he’s dead. She’s questioned by the police. 

Kate reflects that yes, she and Ben were having a few problems. They’d moved to the suburbs and Kate quit her job so they could focus on starting a family. But nothing has happened. When Ben read her book, he’s disturbed that Klara feels similar to Kate. Does Kate think he’s controlling like Troy? She assures him she doesn’t.

Henry, who seems to exist in Kate’s reality, also best a visit from the police

He doesn’t mention that he snuck into Kate and Ben’s house, saw her manuscript and emailed it to himself.  He noticed that some of Kate’s plot seemed to mirror her real life. For instance, her visit to the doctor, for instance. And her obvious unhappiness.

Mary reflects that this is the second murder in her Hawthorne Heights neighborhood

The detectives come and talk to Mary too. They want to speak to her son Owen but she says that he hasn’t said a word since his parole from prison a couple of years ago. Mary lets the detectives meet with Owen but he doesn’t speak. 

Kate debates whether to mention her manuscript to the police. 

Henry goes to Kate’s house and lets himself in. He insists he didn’t kill Ben but it was probably the murderer next door.  Kate throws him out  and looks up the case. Someone stabbed Edward Irvin was to death. His wife Mary confessed, but their son was charged and spent fifteen years in prison. Kate notices that the photo frames in her living room are empty.

Mary notices that a knife from her knife block is missing. She puts the knife block in her donations box and buys a new knife set at Target. One of the detectives stops by and says that Owen needs to come by for questioning by a psychiatrist. He and Mary discuss her husband’s murder. She claims he was strangling her and Owen acted to defend her and the detective says there was no evidence of that. What Mary doesn’t mention was that she’d been exchanging flirty letters with a co-worker, and her husband found out and hit her. 

Two police officers come to take Kate to the station for questioning. They have her manuscript, sent to them by Henry. They ask if her husband was controlling, like the character int he book. She counters that Henry broke into her house and there is a convicted murderer across the street. 

Kate’s close friend Maya shows up for a visit and scolds her for talking to the police without a lawyer. Maya researches both Henry and Owen and suggests contacting someone at Henry’s former job. Lacey’s replacement suggests they talk to Lacey, who says she can’t discuss him. 

Meanwhile, Henry is pleased to see the police focused on Kate.

Owen writes his mother a note saying he has information about the murder. Someone was in their house the day before the murder. That person took a knife, then left. 

Janet goes to the police station to tell them that Henry killed Ben

She heard Henry sneak out that night, then return and take a shower and wash his clothes. She saved a piece of his bloody shirt before he disposed of his clothing, and brings it with her to the station.

Epilogue: 

Mary and Owen are in their new place. Mary is dating.

Kate has moved to a condo in Baltimore. She is finishing her book and it will be a story of her and Ben.

Janet feels no guilt about what she did. As she returns from the police station, she gets a mysterious tin of muffins, which she eats, reflecting that they taste of peanut butter, and her son Henry had a deadly peanut allergy.

My Questions About Ours is a Tale of Murder

Who are the muffins from? Did I miss something?

• Kate? It’s a pretty big coincidence that Troy and Henry both had a peanut allergy.
• Lacey? She could have known about the allergy from the workplace.

When does Henry steal Kate’s keys? It must have been the first time he snuck into her house, the time he used her hand cream.

How did Henry get into Mary’s house? She mentions that she keeps the door unlocked.

Connections to The Cry of the Owl by Patricia Highsmith:

Here’s the plot, which has a few similarities to Ours is a Tale of Murder:

Fleeing New York City after a failed marriage, artist Robert Forrester moves to small-town Pennsylvania. He becomes fascinated with the simple domesticity of his beautiful neighbor Jenny, watching her through the windows of her home — until she invites him in for tea. A now mutual obsession triggers an affair that angers her boyfriend. When the boyfriend vanishes, Robert becomes a murder suspect, gradually sensing he is the target of a larger plot.