This week I’d like to review a book I read a few months ago. It was a book with a concept that I found fascinating – ‘Dear Killer’ by Katherine Ewell. The premise is thus: Kit receives letters addressed ‘Dear Killer’. Each one requests that she murder a specific person and gives the reasons behind the request. She then decides who to kill and when she does, leaves a letter with the body. A prolific serial killer operating on her own societal standards. Well, the standards of her mother , the original ‘Dear Killer’ and the person training Kit. Murder is the only way of life Kit has ever known and the only way of relating to others her mother has taught her.
The rules are simple (taken from the book):
Rule One—Nothing is right, nothing is wrong.
Rule Two—Be careful.
Rule Three—Fight using your legs whenever possible, because they’re the strongest part of your body. Your arms are the weakest.
Rule Four—Hit to kill. The first blow should be the last, if at all possible.
Rule Five—The letters are the law.
Kit lives by these rules and others die by them. She gets paid to do this by the letter writers and essentially sees it as a service she’s doing, one that fits her nihilistic morals. But then, things get complicated, the rules don’t fit and Kit has to examine what she’s doing and how she feels about this turn of events.
I have to say that I found this concept a very interesting one. What do we learn from our family and what do we learn from society? When do we begin to fill a role because it’s expected vs filling the role because it’s what we’ve chosen. All of the relationships in this novel center around Kit and her role as killer. The reader is left wondering what would be happening in her relationships if she wasn’t so stuck in her world – if she had not be brought up to be a trained killer, who could and would she be? On a side note, it’s interesting to see a female character who kicks such butt in a realistic world (eg, non dystopian).
I found the service she provides fascinating. I don’t think I’d ever be in the position to request some kind of serial killer, but the fact that there are people so desperate they would request someone in their life to be killed was intriguing. The way Ewell builds the world, it seems totally believable that this could happen – that the services of an anonymous serial killer could be requested so often and for so long – a multi generational dear killer family.
This book is not for everyone. I have recommended it to students who tell me they like books about killers, crime and that fall a little more into the thriller genre.
I read this book on my kobo on April 4th, 2014. It was published by Katherine Tegan Books on April 1st, 2014. The ISBN is 9780062257802.
Alison Edwards 