Book Review | Nine Lives by Peter Swanson

An unremarkable envelope drops into the mail slots of nine different people, containing a single white paper with a list of their names. These nine strangers don’t know each other. But one by one, they meet their end. Who is sending these letters and why are they targeting them?

It was the most interesting piece of mail that Arthur Kruse, having just returned from physical therapy, received that morning.

He opened the envelope, not expecting anything of note, and was surprised to find a short list of names, including his. He didn’t recognize any of the other people on the list. 

Nine Lives tells the story of nine strangers who receive a mysterious letter with a list of names, including theirs. But they don’t know the other names. One by one, the people on the list are being killed.

Like the author’s previous books, this one is fast-paced and made it hard for me to put down. The characters are varied and interesting; there’s a suburban father, an FBI agent, a gay widower, a singer-songwriter, and an English professor among others. I was even disappointed when a couple of characters I really liked ended up dead. The storyline is suspenseful because I had no idea who’ll die next. There’s an Agatha Christie influence here – in fact, one of her books is mentioned on page by one of the characters. But the story does stand on its own.

I did find the killer’s motive a little unsatisfying. The core of it is basically the person wants to get justice for something that happened in the past but it comes across like them taking out their issues on unrelated people. So this could have been a fantastic revenge tale but the execution could have been better. There’s also a random chapter from the POV of a character who was never seen again. That didn’t feel necessary to me.

Though I had issues with the overall execution of the plot, I still ended up enjoying this book. I’m happy to add Nine Lives to the plus column!

I received a copy from the publisher and Times Reads for review purposes.

About the author: Peter Swanson

Photo by Christian Lue