Truthfully, I don't think murder is necessarily as bad as people make it out to be. Everyone dies. What difference does it make if a few bad apples get pushed along a little sooner than God intended? And your wife, for example, seems like the kind worth killing.I keep seeing that The Kind Worth Killing is considered a modern retelling of Strangers on a Train, but it's really not: Instead of strangers planning to swap murders, here we have two strangers meeting in an airport lounge, and as the man confesses to having murderous fantasies about his wife, the woman he's drinking with agrees that the wife sounds like she deserves it. It doesn't appear as though this mysterious woman will get anything out of encouraging the fantasy, but as she's holding a little known Patricia Highsmith novel (the author who actually wrote Strangers on a Train, The Talented Mr. Ripley, etc.), the point is telegraphed early that we're in for a bumpy, twisty ride.
I also keep seeing this book compared to Gone Girl, and that might be more apt. The novels share an alternating viewpoint (eventually from four different points of view in this book), and both are peopled with sociopaths that the reader feels conflicted about rooting for. Should a reader feel empathy for a character who thinks the following?
(S)urvival was everything. It was the meaning of life. And to take another life was, in many ways, the greatest expression of what it meant to be alive.As I was reading The Kind Worth Killing, I really thought it could have been written by Gillian Flynn – author Peter Swanson used a very similar voice to good effect. This is totally genre fiction – which I keep reading despite not having a particular fondness for – and for the most part, it wasn't a predictable plotline (which is why I'm not sharing anything beyond the opening scene), the flashbacks were satisfying, and the characters were interesting enough (even if, upon reflection, they seem fairly cliched). The Kind Worth Killing is a page turner, and the twists were rewarding right up until the muddled ending, but even then, I wasn't necessarily dissatisfied. Consider this a lightweight time waster – not some deeply penetrating psychological thriller – and you won't be disappointed.
