Have you read The Kind Worth Killing by Peter Swanson and need a plot summary or a list of characters. Want to talk about all those twists and that CRAZY ending? You are in the right place. Grab a comfy chair and let’s get to it. Here’s my Spoiler Review of The Kind Worth Killing!
Table of Contents for Spoiler Review of The Kind Worth Killing
List of Characters in The Kind Worth Killing
Plot Summary of The Kind Worth Killing
What Was the Ending of The Kind Worth Killing?
Spoiler Discussion of The Kind Worth Killing
Will There Be a Movie of A Kind Worth Killing?
List of Characters in The Kind Worth Killing
Lily – daughter of a semi-famous novelist
Ted – made money in 1990s dot.com boom, married to Miranda
Miranda – married to Ted
Brad – the contractor who is working on Miranda and Ted’s house
Chet – boyfriend of Lily’s mom who is murdered by teenage Lily. She dumps the body in a well on her mother’s property.
Eric – Lily’s college boyfriend
Faith – Eric’s ex
Detective Henry Kimball – Boston cop investigating Ted’s murder
Detective Roberta James – Kimball’s partner
Plot Summary of The Kind Worth Killing
Strangers on a Plane
TED POV, PRESENT: In an airport lounge in London, Lily and Ted get to chatting when their flight to Boston is delayed. they talk about their lives and the house Ted and Miranda, his wife of three years, are building in coastal Maine. Ted also tells Lily that Miranda is cheating on him. He says he wants to kill her and Lily says she thinks he should.
LILY POV, FLASHBACK: Lily is fourteen and lives with her divorced mother in a Connecticut house called Monk’s. Lily’s mom has taken up with a painter who is sexually menacing Lily, making remarks, and sneaking in her room at night to masturbate.
TED POV, PRESENT: On the plane, Ted and Lily continue to discuss the Miranda situation. He could divorce her, but he’s shocked at her ability to lie to him about her affair with Brad, the contractor working on their house. He feels like Miranda targeted him because of his money and feels used by her. Ted and Lily agree to meet in a week to discuss Miranda.
At the meeting, Lily offers to help Ted kill Miranda. Lily asks Ted if Miranda thinks Brad should live or die, and when he chooses “die,” Lily says, “Good. That’s going to make this a whole lot easier.”
Lily is actually a killer
LILY POV, FLASHBACK: Lily recalls killing a cat that was attacking her orange cat Bess (hmmm Lily is a redhead I see the parallels.) This gives her an idea about Chet. She lures him outside to an old well on an abandoned neighboring farm. Then she asks him to pull up a rope that she’d dropped down there. As he climbs down the rope, she pushes him and then throws rocks on top of him. She packs his things and throws them down the well too.
TED POV, PRESENT: Ted heads up to Maine, where Miranda is supervising the house construction. Brad is there and Ted decides to collect information on him. Ted learns that Brad is divorced and manages some cottages. He steals the key to Brad’s house.
LILY POV, FLASHBACK: At college, Lily falls in love with Eric. They stay together after he graduates and moves to New York, and comes to Monk’s on the weekends to see Lily. One day, Lily comes to New York to meet her father and runs into a friend who says that Eric spends every weekend with his sick father. Realizing that Eric has been lying to her, Lily follows him and discovers he’s back with Faith.
TED POV, PRESENT: Lily and Ted meet again and he tells her about stealing Brad’s key. They make their plan.
Ted is pretty twisted too but at least feels remorse
LILY POV, FLASHBACK: Lily leaves to study art conservation in London. Eric comes to visit her and she kills him by spiking his food with peanuts. In a separate flashback, Ted recalls getting revenge on a disloyal girl by sneaking into her room, tying her up, and leaving her in her closet. He still has dreams that she died as a result (she didn’t).
Ted is Dead
TED POV, PRESENT: Ted goes to Winslow College outside Boston, where Lily works. When he gets home to Boston, Brad shows up at his house with a gun. Ted thinks Miranda must have sent Brad to kill him. Brad shoots Ted.
Big twist #1: Miranda is Faith!
LILY POV, PRESENT: In the first class lounge, Lily recognizes Ted, the husband of Faith, Eric’s girlfriend. Faith is her middle name and she’s now going by her first name, Miranda. Unhappy about Faith/Miranda’s cheating with Eric, she decides to encourage Ted to murder Miranda. Then she reads in the paper that Ted has been killed. She’s shocked. The whole time she and Ted were plotting, so were Miranda and Brad. She considers going to the police but decides to deal with Miranda herself.
MIRANDA POV, PRESENT: Miranda meets with Brad, who has just staged the “burglary gone wrong” murder of Ted. Brad says that Ted clearly knew about the affair. Miranda drives from Boston to Maine to see her mother. Kimball, who is investigating Ted’s murder, calls Miranda and asks why her husband might have been in Winslow, MA the day of his death.
LILY POV, PRESENT: Lily, upset about what Miranda and Brad dead, heads to Maine to spy on them. she goes to a bar and talks to locals about Miranda and Ted.
The Police Have a Suspect
MIRANDA POV, PRESENT: Kimball calls again to tell Miranda there was a witness that saw a man come to their house at the time of Ted’s murder. He wants her come back to Boston and look at a sketch. Driving back, Miranda thinks about cheating with Eric. She doesn’t think Lily ever knew. Miranda looks at the sketch and it’s obviously Brad. She also mentions that she does know someone in Winslow: Lily.
LILY POV, PRESENT: Lily finally finds Brad and tells him that if he does her a favor, she won’t tell anyone that she killed Ted. She wants a meeting with Miranda. Lily drives back to Winslow, where Detective Kimball shows up. Lily says she didn’t see him in Winslow. Kimball asks if they might have met on a flight and she says she possibly could have tackled to Ted. Kimball has a key (the one Ted stole from Brad’s house) and asks to try it in Lily’s door, but it doesn’t fit.
MIRANDA POV, PRESENT: Miranda recalls discussing killing Ted with Brad. When she arrives at Brad’s house and is shocked to see Lily there. She waits outside and, after Lily leaves, Miranda confronts Brad, who tells her that Lily wants him to kill Miranda.
LILY POV, PRESENT: Lily drives the unfinished house in Maine. Lily wants money to keep quiet, but Miranda tells her she can’t get Lily any money until the estate settles. Brad comes out of the shadows holding a wrench.
Uh oh – Miranda gets double-crossed
MIRANDA POV, PRESENT: Brad had been panicked that Lily knew everything. He tells Miranda that Lily hates her and wants to kill her. Miranda tells Brad that there was a witness that can place him at Ted’s house at the time of his murder.
Brad says that Lily wants him to kill Miranda but offers to kill Lily. Lily returns to Boston, wonders if Lily killed Eric, and tries to decide how to handle Lily. The plan is that they will lure Lily to the unfinished house, and that Brad will sneak in and hit Lily on the head with a wrench. But Brad turns on Miranda and hits her instead.
LILY POV, PRESENT: Lily tells Brad he did a good job. She had convinced Brad that Miranda was going to throw Brad under the bus for Ted’s murder. That Miranda manipulated Brad into doing her dirty work, but will inherit Ted’s money and throw Brad under the bus.
Lily says she’ll kill Miranda but Brad offers to do it. Lily wonders if she can trust hm, but he does kill Miranda. She then offers him a sip from her flask, which is poisoned. When he succumbs, she strangles him with a wire hanger.
DETECTIVE KIMBALL POV, PRESENT: His witness has positively identified Brad, but now Brad has vanished. He goes to Boston as he’s found that Lily was the same person Miranda knew from college. Also he knows that that Ted had a copy of Brad’s key He’d interviewed Lily and, because he found her beautiful, wrote some off-color limericks about her. He gets a call saying Miranda has been found dead.
LILY POV, PRESENT: Lily dumps Brad in the well at Monk’s, then convinces her mother to travel to Maine with her.
DETECTIVE KIMBALL POV, PRESENT: The police suspect that Brad killed Miranda and fled. Kimball tries to confirm Brad’s alibi but Polly, the woman he said he was with, said she passed out and can’t be sure.
LILY POV, PRESENT: Lily picks up her father from the airport. She heads back to Winslow and runs into Kimball.
DETECTIVE KIMBALL POV, PRESENT: Lily admits meeting Ted on her flight and discussing his wife’s affair. She says she went to Maine to investigate his murder. Kimball starts to follow her. He has told his partner about Lily’s boyfriend Eric dying when he was visiting her. That Lily befriended Miranda’s husband and then he died. He follows Lily into a cemetery where she stabs him.
What Was the Ending of The Kind Worth Killing?
LILY POV, PRESENT: Lily is arrested by Roberta James. Lily tells her court-appointed lawyer that Kimball had been following her and his stabbing was self-defense. Kimball insists that as Lily stabbed him, she said “I’m sorry.”
Lily’s lawyer says that Kimball had been writing weird limericks about him and that his partner was worried about him. She says Lily will probably not serve any time.
Lily gets a letter from her father saying that the farm with the well, the one where Lily has been hiding bodies, has sold and is going to be dug up.
Spoiler Discussion of The Kind Worth Killing
Wow, The Kind Worth Killing was quite the wild ride and I have to say I enjoyed it. I thought this book was a great blend of a strong plot with good characterization. Yes, the characters were all terrible, but it was entertaining watching them go up against each other.
This one had some tropes, like the character who … SURPRISE … is the same person as a character in flashbacks. I don’t want to mention spoilers for another book, but I can think of a couple of other books that used that twist. Still, I was not expecting Miranda to be Faith.
I was also not expecting Lily to go after Detective Kimball, but I am glad he is okay.
The final twist is also one I’ve just read in another book (I will tell you all these spoiler-y similarities if you ask me in comments.) But I did like the fact that Lily will (hopefully) face some justice.
Will There Be a Movie of The Kind Worth Killing?
Maybe? The option was purchased around the time of the book’s publication in 2015. Agnieszka Holland was attached to the project as the director, Christopher Kyle and Nick Wechsler as screenwriters, and Paula Mae and Steve Schwartz of Chockstone Pictures producing. In 2017, EW reported that Amber Heard was supposed to have signed on (to play Lily, I guess?)
But that last update was five years ago, and I can’t find any online evidence that the project has moved out of development into production. It is not listed on the Chockstone website as in the pipeline. It’s possible that the option expired, or that the pandemic is at fault. If you have any information, tell me in comments!
Tell me what you thought of The Kind Worth Killing in comments. I think this is the best book by Peter Swanson I’ve read!
Here are my reviews of other Peter Swanson books:
Spoiler Discussion for Every Vow We Break
Review of Nine Lives (coming soon!)
Spoiler Discussion of Nine Lives
