Readers Guide for She Didn’t See It Coming

Detective Jayne Salter is called to the Frost condo, where the building manager who tells her that the CCTV is not working.

Salter and Kilgour discuss Bryden’s neighbor, Henry Kemp. He was accused of abducting a woman, whose account was credible, but there was no physical evidence.

Salter suggests the only way somebody could get in or out of the building without being seen would be through the parking garage.

Bryden dropped her daughter off for daycare sent a few work emails, but then wasn’t heard from after 10 PM. The CCTV in the parking garage was also not working.

Salter finds something unusual on Bryden’s phone : calls to a Derek Gardner, and a large cash withdrawal. She goes to talk to Gardner, who says that they corresponded about their fender bender and met at a coffee shop, where she gave him cash. He’s also a cybersecurity expert, which is possibly a big red herring. Or a huge clue.

Salter comes to interview everyone in Bryden’s family.

• Her sister Lizzie, who insists that she doesn’t know anything, but wonders if her sister is still in the building.
• Paige, Bryden’s best friend, seems to know nothing, but also seems uncomfortable when they ask her if either Bryden or Sam could have been cheating.

The K-9 unit arrives to search the building. The dog barks in front of a large suitcase in one of the building storage bins. They open the suitcase and find a woman’s body.

Salter informs Bryden’s family and interviews Sam, who identifies the suitcase as his. He points out that anyone who lived in the building could get into the storage area. Sam gives his alibi: eating outside at a food truck on a work day … for two hours. Weird, right? I think he’s having an affair with Paige.

Lizzie is a member of an online true crime group. She goes online and posts.

Derek Gardner tells his wife Alice that the woman who rear-ended him is missing. 

The detectives go to Paige’s apartment. Paige admits that Bryden was cheating … with Derek Gardner!

The police go to Derek’s and confront him. He’s furious.  Derek and Alice are both geniuses and possibly sociopaths. He insists he wasn’t cheating.

The pathologist says that Bryden was probably asphyxiated with a plastic bag. Her clothes are missing. 

Sam and Paige were definitely having an affair

Salter and Kilgour speak to Bryden’s doctor, who says she had a cracked rib a month ago that the doctor thought was from a kick. 

Sam hires a lawyer. Derek and Alice are creepy as ever, and possibly killed Alice’s mother?

Lizzie posts questions for the true crime group. She’s fixated on why the killer would move her body from the apartment, rather than leave it there. Was she killed in the storage bin?

Sam admits (to himself) that he physically abused Bryden. Meanwhile, Jayne is looking into Derek and Alice and discovers that Alice’s mother died in a hit and run accident in New Hampshire, after which she inherited 3 million dollars, some of which Derek used to start his business. 

Jayne interviews Alice. She has evidence that Derek cheated, just not with Bryden. And she wants to talk about Alice’s mother’s death. Does Alice know where Derek was the night her mother died?

Alice reports back to Derek, who is furious. Also, Alice killed her mother…

Henry tells his wife Tracy that his alibi held up. Tracy is thinking about the woman who accused her husband of abducting her.

Jayne names Derek as a person of interest

The police have found no evidence that Derek Gardner was at the condo, but a woman comes forward saying she saw a person with a suitcase the day Bryden disappeared. Francine was in the elevator at 1:30 and saw a large suitcase, but can’t remember who was with it. 

Lizzie is certain Alice is posting on the FB group. She reports a weird encounter with Alice on the playground to the police.

Paige drives to Sam’s parking garage and he buzzes her up. They sleep together.

Salter wonders if Alice might have killed Bryden

The police find Bryden’s clothes in a dumpster. Lizzie’s Facebook group gets the newspaper to run a story on Alice’s mom’s mysterious death. 

Alice, desperate to stop Jayne from prying, breaks into her apartment and snoops around. She finds out that Jayne is dating Michael, a professor.

Jayne goes on the Facebook group and figures out who Alice and Lizzie are. She questions Lizzie about her Facebook activity. 

Jayne and Kilgour go over the suspects: Sam, Derek, Alice, even Lizzie. 

She Didn’t See it Coming: Ending Explained

Francine, the elevator witness, finally remembers a detail: a sticker on the suitcase AND the ringtone of the person rolling it.

Jayne interviews Paige. She asks if she and Sam were having an affair. She calls Paige’s phone and… it’s the same ringtone that Francine remmebers.

Paige insists that Sam killed Bryden and that she put the body in the storage bin. She dumped the clothes. Bryden wasn’t cheating with Derek.

Sam denies killing Bryden .

What happened to Bryden in She Didn’t See it Coming:

Bryden is working at home when someone buzzes her from the parking garage. It’s her best friend Paige, who puts a plastic bag over Bryden’s head when her back is turned.

Sam DOES have a real alibi. He was at his drug dealer’s apartment. He has an opioid addiction to cope with work stress. 

Paige is furious. 

Michael, Jayne’s professor boyfriend tells Jayne that he met an attractive woman in one of his lectures and they are meeting for coffee. (Yes, that woman is Alice the sociopath!)

Did You Guess the Killer Was Paige?

I did not.

Yes, I was fooled by Paige’s lie that Bryden was having an affair, stuck on the fact that Derek was a cybersecurity expert who I thought could have dismantled the CCTV in the building or bypassed the security system.

I did not suspect Lizzie, and thought Sam had to be a red herring.

But Lizzie was onto something: Paige wanted to hide Bryden’s body so that Clara didn’t have to see it.

Why Did Paige Kill Bryden?

Nothing more complicated than that she wanted Bryden’s life and Bryden was in the way.

What About the Ending of She Didn’t See it Coming? Is there going to be a sequel?

The ending of She Didn’t See it Coming did remind me a little bit of my favorite book by Shari Lapena, which is Not a Happy Family.

That book also had an unresolved aspect at the ending.

In this book, we know that Alice murdered two people, her mother and her older lover, Richard. Alice worries that her best friend Susan might blab. THEN she has creepily introduced herself to Michael, Jayne Salter’s boyfriend.

What do you think? Loose end or something that requires a sequel?