Peter Swanson’s The Kind Worth Killing is the psychological thriller genre at its best. It is, to my mind, the author’s best book. Psychological thrillers run the risk of being too laden with exposition, but Mr. Swanson does a fantastic job of writing in an active voice that drew me into the story. Tautly paced and divided into three parts—each ending in a sly twist—the tale has a quartet of noir-like narrators whose morals are as ambiguous as their motives are chilling.

The characters in the tale are well-drawn, from the vengeful, sensitive husband to the manipulative, beautiful wife to the drunken, bumbling lover to the quirky, intuitive detective to the cool, composed femme fatale. Each narrator is unreliable, and it is intriguing to see each character from the other’s perspective. Though one character in particular needed a little more fleshing out of motive to be believable, the strength of the tale lay in the driving need to discover how each narrator’s machinations played out.

The character of Lily Kintner is a standout: an anti-heroine who has the moral compass of a wild animal. She is realistically and intriguingly presented. Mr. Swanson has done a stellar job with her character, pulling the reader into the uncomfortable position of rooting for a woman who is unapologetically a cold-blooded psychopath. Lily is an antithetical Nancy Drew—clever, intelligent, rational, calculating, prepared, and committing murders instead of solving them. I was captivated by her character, a testament to how well-written she is, and I would rank Lily as one of the best antiheroines in literature.

The story moves at a swift pace as the narrators’ perspectives tangle over one another in a tense cat-and-mouse game that gripped me from the first page to the last. Mr. Swanson’s writing style is perfect for the genre: the prose is elegant, the imagery vivid, the lyrical phrases beautiful and unsettling. The Kind Worth Killing is an engrossing read, surprising, twisted, and an utterly satisfying trek through the darker side of humanity.

Highly recommended.