She Treads Softly: The Kind Worth Saving

Thursday, March 2, 2023

The Kind Worth Saving

The Kind Worth Saving by Peter Swanson
3/7/23; 320 pages
William Morrow & Company; HarperCollins

The Kind Worth Saving by Peter Swanson is a very highly recommended twisty psychological thriller.

Henry Kimball is working as a private investigator after the events in The Kind Worth Killing (2015) when former student Joan Whalen shows up at his office. She is sure her husband Richard is having an affair and wants Kimball to investigate and document proof of his infidelity. What seems like a simple case soon turns into something more. Present day chapters alternate with chapters that flashback to years earlier and follow Joan when she was fifteen and vacationing with her parents in Maine. Something more was going on then too.

The Kind Worth Saving is an engrossing thriller with excellent writing and a complex, twisty, shrewd plot that kept me riveted to the pages through out. And yes, it is a perceptive, chilling psychological thriller that you will finish in one sitting because you will not be able to put it down. The two timelines work well together. Both are equally interesting and have plenty of surprises along the way. It is best to not have too much information before reading this novel. Read mindfully and try not to make assumptions because Swanson will surprise you with the directions the narrative take.

Henry is a realistic, well-developed character and is relatable and likable. For those who read The Kind Worth Killing, Lily Kitner is back. You can read The Kind Worth Saving as a stand alone, but it is, according to Swanson, a semi-sequel. There is a history and backstory. Pertinent information and details are contained within the narrative to provide background information, but The Kind Worth Saving is impressive enough that you will likely want to read The Kind Worth Killing.

Disclosure: My review copy was courtesy of William Morrow & Company via Edelweiss.

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John Updike's six rules for reviewing:

1. Try to understand what the author wished to do, and do not blame him for not achieving what he did not attempt.

2. Give him enough direct quotation--at least one extended passage--of the book's prose so the review's reader can form his own impression, can get his own taste.

3. Confirm your description of the book with quotation from the book, if only phrase-long, rather than proceeding by fuzzy precis.

4. Go easy on plot summary, and do not give away the ending.

5. If the book is judged deficient, cite a successful example along the same lines, from the author's oeuvre or elsewhere. Try to understand the failure. Sure it's his and not yours?

To these concrete five might be added a vaguer sixth, having to do with maintaining a chemical purity in the reaction between product and appraiser.....Review the book, not the reputation.... Better to praise and share than blame and ban. The communion between reviewer and his public is based upon the presumption of certain possible joys in reading, and all our discriminations should curve toward that end.