The Killer You Know, by S. R. Masters
Genre: Psychological Suspense
Publisher: Redhook Books
Release Date: May 14, 2019
Many thanks to Redhook Books, Netgalley, and S. R. Masters for allowing me to read this book in exchange for an honest review. I appreciate it!
Summary:
In the rural, middle-of-nowhere village of Blythe, five teens become friends. Late one summer, one of them, Will, jokes that he’s going to be a serial killer. He’ll disappear for a year, make the murders look like suicide; one at a festival, one at Loch Ness, and another in Blythe, possibly one of the gang. It’s disturbingly detailed but it’s also classic Will, always a little off-beat, a joke. Or is it? Sixteen years later, the long-separated gang reunites. Jen, the Facebook-oversharer, sets it up. Rupesh, a newly-divorced doctor, drinks too much. Steve shows up, cool as ever. Adeline, a podcaster, still feels a spark toward Steve. And Will . . . he’s a no-show. Why?
Did he forget?
Does he not want to relive that last summer, the one that left him damaged?
Or has he done what he said: become a serial killer?
The group is uneasy. Jen begins searching the internet, and what was once a joke turns real: there’s been two suicides in the past year, one at a music festival, the other at Loch Ness. Troubled, the rest of the friends start searching for Will. Is he going to kill again . . . and will it be one of them?
My thoughts:
Overall, The Killer You Know is a strong book, but there was a big distracting issue.
The dual timeline isn’t consistent.
Adeline narrates the present story line in 1st person point of view and in past tense.
The past story line is narrated by all five in turn, in 3rd person point of view and in present tense.
It was jarring to me to skip from Adeline’s narrative to another narrator (who may or may not be Adeline again), from 1st person POV to 3rd and back, and from past tense to present tense. It was also strange to read Adeline’s point of view from both 1st and 3rd person.
I know these must have been deliberate choices that Masters made. I can possibly guess why, at least on the verb tense changes.
Here’s the guess: using present tense verbs for the past story line emphasizes the extent that the past is always present for us. It shapes who we are. It definitely shapes who these characters have become and fits with the nostalgia theme.
I can also guess on the shifting POVs: this gives us insight into how all the characters think, which is a good thing.
But some of the characters, such as Rupesh and Jen, received only two sections, so I never got to know them as well as Adeline, Steve, and Will.
The inconsistency is distracting to me. I don’t know if other readers agree or notice this. I think the story could’ve been best served by being consistent with the verb tense and giving each character equal playing time. Or, perhaps, giving all the present sections to Adeline, and dividing the past sections between the other four.
I noticed that several reviewers mentioned the book being slow. I wonder if part of the slowness was the jumping from head to head and back and forth in time. With each shift, we have to re-acclimate our minds to the new environment. Just a thought.
Now for the strong points of The Killer You Know.
The premise is intriguing.
I’ve read other books with groups of old friends reuniting and reigniting old tensions, revealing horrible secrets, and resulting in a present-day catastrophe. Standard in this genre. But Masters gives it a nice twist with Will’s declared career of serial killer. The others wonder if he was serious, if these seemingly random suicides are connected to him, and grapple with their responsibility. But with evidence this vague, how can the police help them?
Getting to see everyone’s POV reveals the dynamics of the group.
While there were aspects I didn’t like (see above), the change of points of view is an effective way of revealing the group dynamics. Jealousy. Tension. Misunderstandings. Coupling off. Again, nothing unusual in these dynamics, as any teenager could tell you. But Masters puts a fresh spin on them:
- Rupesh and Jen couple off, but must contend with her parents’ bigotry.
- Will is strange, as is his friendship with the older male neighbor, but are the others misinterpreting his actions?
- Steve is the alpha male (I wanted to say “queen bee”!) who plays architect of their summer, creating an unusual–and vicious–scavenger hunt, resulting in an increasing tension that threatens to break apart the group.
The recurring theme of the problems with nostalgia.
Adeline’s podcast is called Nostalgia Crush. She and her co-host rip apart classic films, while another co-host argues against them, and they decide whether to consign the movie to the “crusher.” It’s an apt metaphor for the story. Each character must decide whether to give in to the temptations of nostalgia, that desire for the “good old days,” or whether to move forward.
Should they try to reignite their old friendship? Were the good old days really that good? Are they responsible to correct the wrongs of the past? Or should they forget it?
Early in the book, Rupesh–the most level-headed, if most frequently drunken, of the bunch–notes,
“You know the truly sad thing about nostalgia,” he said, “is that by indulging in it we’re openly admitting to dissatisfaction with the present” (The Killer You Know, part 1).
To an extent, all the characters are dissatisfied with the present.
Adeline.
I liked the present-day Adeline. As a narrator, she doesn’t know how much she knows. The past Adeline could be a bit bratty, but weren’t we all at that age?
In the present-day sections, she’s struggling with her relationship with her aging parents, something I think many of the “sandwich generation” can identify with, and each encounter with her mother reignites their old conflict.
She’s in conflict with her co-hosts over the direction of their podcast: should they take the BBC’s offer of job stability at the expense of their independence or to embrace art for art’s sake and not have enough to live on?
She’s conflicted over her reunification with Steve, her first real boyfriend.
These are all things that I could identify with, even though I’m quite different from her, and this made her an enjoyable character to read.
Overall, The Killer You Know is a strong book.
The distractions in the dual timeline (and verb tense, etc.) knocks it down to 4 stars for me. But there’s enough here that’s enjoyable and deep that it’s worth reading.