This article is more than 1 year old

The Extreme Centre, Rise of the Super Furry Animals and The Kind Worth Killing

Tariq Ali in fighting form and more

The Kind Worth Killing

The Kind Worth Killing is Peter Swanson’s second novel, following The Girl with a Clock for a Heart. It is the tale of a pair of femmes fatales; college rivals in love who are fated to meet later in life in murderous circumstances.

The books opens with a chance meeting at Heathrow between Ted Severson, an aggrieved husband who meets a mysterious young woman. She persuades him to kill his cheating wife. Ted’s verdict on his marriage betrays a little of Peter Swanson’s literary style: “We were our own strained cliche… but it worked for us.”

With the exception of a UK flashback, most of the novel takes place in New England. What ensues is a cast of wafer-thin characters royally betraying, fucking and murdering on a whim.

There are two femmes fatales. Miranda, the überbitch who is only in it for the gain has a heart of stone: “I started sleeping with Matthew Ford who made Eric look positively middle class”. She also seems to suffer from a strange designer angst: “I felt oppressed by their tackiness”. The other dubious female lead is Lily, who is more your delicate, poetic variety of psycho. But the quiet ones, so they say, are always the worst.

We are also introduced to Brad Duggett, an amorous handyman who is a puppet in the hands of our perpettes. Do characters called Brad exist outside dire melodrama and the fringes of the Australian cricket team?* And of course, there is Detective Kimble, a mere tool who writes limericks about his suspects that are bad enough to bring Prostetnic Vogon Jeltz to mind.

Peter Swanson, The Kind Worth Killing book cover

Wooden prose is interspersed with informative news reports: “They were a beautiful young couple. They looked like people you would see on television.”

Yeah, weekday afternoons, Channel 5, the Alzheimer’s shift.

“I did mention to Brad Duggett that I was going down to Florida for a long weekend. He must have thought I was telling him because I wanted… Oh my God!”

The starlets are overacting in the manner of straight-to-DVD movies. Thence follows some flashbacks, these girls have history…

A paedo takes a swan dive, a dodgy chicken korma does for a philandering boyfriend. There has to be a showdown, there can only be one victor. Yet even in this putrid ocean of dross, I managed to alight on a prosaic pearl. This from poetic psycho Lily’s father: “I can feel my balls going into hiding, now I know I’m coming home.”

However, Detective Kimble is seemingly on loan from a cartoon: “I loved Nancy Drew too, why do you think I became a detective?”

Peter Swanson leaves us totally in suspenders. Will the yuppie development uncover a deadly secret? Or will Kimble’s dirty poems unleash a wave of carnage in Massachusetts..? The ambiguous ending just screams out, “sequel”.

The Kind Worth Killing is pretty bad by just about any standard, and is best put out of its misery. Is it a text worth reading? Well, even the kind not worth exhuming would struggle to find satisfaction in this book. ®

Peter Swanson, The Kind Worth Killing book coverAuthor Peter Swanson
Title The Kind Worth Killing
Publisher Faber and Faber
Price £14.99 (Hardback), eBook (£6.99)
More info Publication web site

* Vulture Central's backroom gremlins once worked for someone with the real-life name Brad. He was an SME executive who ordered espresso for the office coffee machine, which the workforce used to make standard mugs of builder's coffee. Nobody ever twigged why the entire office practically downed tools by 4pm.

More about

TIP US OFF

Send us news


Other stories you might like