She Treads Softly: Killer Potential

Friday, February 21, 2025

Killer Potential

Killer Potential by Hannah Deitch
3/18/25; 320 pages
HarperCollins

Killer Potential by Hannah Deitch is a so-so female fugitives on the run story.

Evie Gordon is a 29-year-old SAT tutor who arrives for her weekly lesson with Serena Victor at the family's Beverly Hills estate and finds her parents murdered. She also frees a woman tied up in a secret closet. Then Serena returns home, mistakes the two for the killers and while she is swinging a lamp at Evie, Evie hits her with a vase, possibly killing her. Then Serena's boyfriend comes in and spots the two so they flee. Evie drives to a distant Walmart, buys supplies for their life on the run, and then empties her bank accounts. For all of this the woman she rescues refuses to speak. What follows is a tale of their life on the run across the country.

Often I can set disbelief aside for a good story but not in this case. It was simply too unbelievable right from the start. Evie is 29-years old. If you arrive for your scheduled weekly lesson, find the door open and two people murdered you exit the house and call 911. Period. You can't go on ad nauseam about how smart you are while making one bad decision after another. The only thing that kept me reading was to see what manner of bad choices would follow but I could have easily set it aside at any point.

This is for those who enjoy a life on the lam novel full of bad choices. Thanks to HarperCollins for providing me with an advance reader's copy via NetGalley. My review is voluntary and expresses my honest opinion.

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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.