In my post with Spoilers and The Ending Explained for The Kind Worth Saving I will run down the plot of this sequel to The Kind Worth Killing, discuss the book’s connection to another Peter Swanson book, and explain the ending. Let’s go!
Spoilers and The Ending Explained for the Kind Worth Saving
The Kind Worth Saving is book TWO in a series, so if you need to start the story from the beginning, then go here to my Spoiler Discussion for The Kind Worth Killing.
Part One: The Kind Worth Saving
- by Peter Swanson
- Published in 2023 by William Morrow books
- 303 pages
The book’s narrative alternates between Henry, Joan, and Richard’s POVs (boldface indicates whose chapter it is) and between past and present.
- Henry Kimball has resigned from the Boston police department and is working as a private investigator. Joan Grieve Whelan, a former student, hires Henry to prove that her husband Richard, a real estate agent, is cheating on her.
- In a chapter set when Joan was fifteen, she describes being on vacation at the Windward Resort in Kennewick Beach, Maine, with her family. (If that sounds familiar, yes, it’s the same hotel from Swanson’s Nine Lives.) There she ran into Richard, a boy from her school. Richard’s cousin Duane is also staying at the Windward and Joan finds him creepy.
- Back in the present, Henry starts on his investigation. Joan believes her husband is sleeping with his colleague Pam O’Neil. Henry reflects that when he was a high school teacher, a school shooter killed a student at Henry’s school and then himself. This shooting inspired Henry to join the police force.
- Back in the past, Joan and Richard discuss Duane, and how they’d kill someone if they could get away with it. (This feels a little similar to the Lily and Ted airport meeting in book one.) Richard has a whole hit list of people who bullied him, but Joan is clearly fixated on Duane.
- Richard tells Joan that Duane is bragging he slept with her. They make a plot to teach Duane a lesson, but Joan decides to go even further. One night, they go with Duane to the jetty and push him into the water, where he vanishes.
- In the present, Henry follows Pam to a local bar, where she tells him she’s in a “complicated” relationship she wants to get out of. She invites Henry over to her place and they sleep together.
- The next day, Henry follows Richard and Pam as they meet at an empty house. As Henry creeps up to take pictures, he hears gunshots. Inside, he finds Richard and Pam dead and Richard holding a gun. He flees when he hears sirens.
Part Two of The Kind Worth Saving
- The police question Henry, who says Pam told him she wanted to end her affair with Richard. He recalls a creepy prediction Joan made in high school: that her rich husband would die under suspicious circumstances but she’d have the perfect alibi.
- This causes Henry to wonder if Joan intended him to be that alibi. He shows up at Lily’s house to ask her opinion. They are
- sort-of-friends after the events of The Kind Worth Killing.
- Richard narrates five years after Duane died in Maine. He runs into Joan at the local library and she tells him that she married a DIFFERENT RICHARD, a guy named Richie Whalen from high school. Two Richards!
- At the library, Joan drops a lot of bombshells on Windward Resort Richard: 1) she thinks her husband Richard is cheating on her, 2) she asked Pam to test him and see if he’d cheat, 3) she wants to kill him but needs Richard’s help.
- Joan wants a witness see her husband and Pam go into an empty house and then hear gunshots. Joan drops off her husband’s gun for Richard to use . Richard waits in the bedroom of the house that Pam and Richard use for their hookups. When they enters the room, he shoots them and stages the scene.
- Henry visits Lily and tells her that he thinks Joan set him up as a witness to the Richard-Pam scene. He also thinks Joan masterminded a school shooting back in high school. Lily agrees: Joan’s pattern is to get someone to do her dirty work.
- Henry deep dives into Joan’s life and finds a clue: Joan’s sister wrote a poem about a murder in Maine. After finding an article about Duane’s death, he realizes that a boy named Richard was both Duane’s cousin AND the best friend of the school shooter. Furthermore, Joan has connections to three suspicious deaths.
- Henry questions Richard at work and puts a tracker on his car. But Richard brings a bomb to Henry’s office which explodes, leaving Henry in critical condition and Richard dead.
Part Three: The Kind Worth Saving Ending Explained
- Lily hears about the explosion and decides to track down Joan as a way to make up for stabbing Henry in book one. Disguised as Addie Logan, a friend of Richard, Lily befriends Joan and pretends she wants to kill Henry. Joan gives her advice on how to do it. Lily follows Joan’s advice, but uses it to kill Joan.
- Henry gets out of the hospital and visits Lily. The explosion erased his short-term memory. Henry confesses that when Lily was hospitalized, he found her body-dump well. She tells him she put two bodies in there: a predator and the man who killed Ted and Miranda Severson. Henry tells Lily that he loves her, and that he doesn’t mind that she doesn’t love him back.
My Questions About The Kind Worth Saving
What was the connection again between The Kind Worth Saving and Nine Lives?
- Peter Swanson uses New England settings in many of his books.
- The Windward Resort (and its jetty, which I’d stay away from!) is definitely a repeat from Nine Lives.
- But I also wonder if in Every Vow You Break when Abigail and Bruce stop for lunch at a seaside inn near Kennewick Harbor, they are also at the Windward. Bad luck, Abigail!
Themes in and across Peter Swanson’s Books
Classic Mysteries and Suspense Books and Films
- Eight Perfect Murders is based on a bookshop owner’s list of Eight Perfect murders
- A Talent for Murder references Patricia Highsmith and The Talented Mr. Ripley (in both the title and the book itself)
Lists
- Swanson LOVES a list. Besides the one in Eight Perfect Murders, there’s a list element in Nine Lives and also in A Talent for Murder
Writers, Libraries and Bookshops
- Eight Perfect Murders features a bookseller
- Lily’s father in The Kind Worth Killing series is a writer
- Jack Radebaugh in Nine Lives is a writer
- Joan’s sister is a poet, and her poem is a clue for Henry
- Martha in A Talent for Murder works in a library