I enjoyed The Killing Kind; it is well written and a much classier psychological thriller than most. In general this is not a genre I’m keen on but I made an exception for Jane Casey whose other work I have liked very much, and I’m glad I did.
It’s a good, if slightly well worn set-up: Ingrid Lewis is a barrister who has been stalked by a former client, the incredibly creepy and threatening John Webster whom she helped to be acquitted of another stalking offence. After a spell in prison, Webster is out and sinister things begin happening which she is convinced are his doing, but there isn’t any evidence to allow the police to act so she has to take things into her own hands…
So far, so familiar. However, Jane Casey is a really good writer who brilliantly conveys the oppressive fear of being stalked and who structures and paces her plot extremely well. Ingrid’s work as a barrister is also excellently portrayed (although it does seem to be rather forgotten in the second half of the book). There are some surprising revelations but the are very neatly and quite plausibly done, avoiding the clumsy Incredible Twists which usually annoy me badly in books of this kind. These aspects make this several cuts above the average and I became completely hooked for a long period.
It’s not perfect; I was happy to allow some implausibilities for the sake of a good story and Casey does manage the inevitable Intelligent Person Doing Very Foolish Things aspects of the story very well, but one or two incidents and the ending did stretch credibility a little too far for me. Nonetheless, I thought this was gripping, extremely well written and very enjoyable. Recommended.
(My thanks to HarperCollins for an ARC via NetGalley.)
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