A talent for Murder by Peter Swanson is the third book in his Henry Kimball/Lily Kintner series. It starts with Martha, a newly married librarian who is starting to become suspicious of her husband. She had married Alan Ratliff after a somewhat whirlwind romance and long solo life where she had thought she would always be alone. When she notices some unusual behavior, such as him practicing his smile in the middle of the night, she starts paying more attention to his business trips. Only after spotting some blood on his shirt after he returns from a trip does she start actively investigating. Discovering a pattern of murdered women that match his trip pattern Martha becomes worried and decide to seek advice. Lily Kintner is an old school friend of Martha’s who had once helped her to break things off with an abusive boyfriend. Intrigued by what Martha tells her Lily decides to help out by following Alan and seeing what is actually going on during his next trip. What she ends up discovering is worse than either her or Martha had been picturing and potentially much more deadly.
I just want to say that this book was a fast-paced and edge of your seat thriller that kept me in suspense for a good portion of the book. Many of the twists and turns were rather unexpected and somewhat surprising detours and the book ended somewhere drastically different than where it seemed to have need headed at the beginning. It was definitely engaging and thoroughly satisfying to read due to that. This book was not even close to what the description implied it would be and yet at the same time it also totally played up to the original uncertainty implied in that description. In terms of just the plot it was very well written and had great pacing which really helped build the tension for the big finale which was mostly unexpected. While the ending was not even close to where the story started the progress of events to reach that was pretty logical and it did progress pretty smoothly. I thoroughly enjoyed reading as Martha and Lily worked on figuring out what had happened and what was going on. The changes in point of view as the story progressed were also well done and really helped to further the tension and the heightened sense of danger that was present towards the end. In all honesty I also felt the ending was almost anticlimactic though it did do a good job wrapping everything up. I don’t want to spoil anything but I felt like there should have been just a bit more explanation of what happened. The book was still really good and I greatly enjoyed reading it so am happy giving it 4.5 out of 5 stars.
This is a good example of an adult thriller so if you tend to enjoy that genre than you might consider trying this one as it was pretty good. It is part of a series but it can also function well enough as a stand alone that you don’t have to read the previous books unless you want to. The book is aimed at adult readers and I would definitely agree with that in this case. There is considerable violence, especially in the latter half of the novel and there is a somewhat graphic murder description fairly early on in addition to some minor adult content throughout. I would recommend no one younger than about sixteen should read it and probably everyone should be careful going in. It is still a good read though so if it sounds interesting I hope you will consider trying it. Remember to share your thoughts in the comments if you do.