The Killers Cousin

Werlin, N. (1998). The Killer's Cousin. Random House: New York, NY (9780385325608)

David Yaffe is being forced to move to Boston to live with his relatives in whom he rarely has spent any time with and has only experienced animosity between his mother and Aunt Julia. David must move even though he has been acquitted of killing his girlfriend Emily the year before. David must move because he needs to finish high school. David must move in order to experience a second chance from the accident that haunts his life.

Nancy Werlin’s The Killer’s Cousin grabs the reader’s attention from the moment you open the book. As a reader, you believe initially that you will be sharing the experience of heartache, pain, and overcoming horror in life. However, what you soon realize in this suspense mystery that there is more than meets the eye with David’s younger cousin, Lily.

From the moment the reader meets Lily, you are surrounded by questions that are never answered until the very end of the novel. As a reader you know less about the actual events than the main character David. David experiences ghost, mysterious whispers, and interesting occurrences in his upstairs apartment.

The ghost, who we come to find out is Lily’s older sister Kathy, is sending messages to seek help for her younger sister who killed her out of jealousy. As the story comes to an end, we find that Lily, in her rebellion of having another older relative take away her parents’ attention, is actually seeking help in dealing with her own secret at such a young age. Lily poisoned her sister. Lily must live with the truth for the rest of her life.

Lily attempts to pay for her mistakes by killing herself so that she will never make the same mistake again. David actually teaches Lily a lesson of overcoming fear, "And it doesn't matter," I said with difficulty. "It doesn't matter how you got there, or whether you never meant to do anything so horrible. What's true every day is that you are on the other side. Alone. Knowing -That you could do it again," finished Lily softly. (p. 225). “I know, but your punishment isn’t to die. It’s to live with it. Like me, Lily” (p. 208).

The book has a terrifying tone to it. Werlin’s characterization of Lily keeps the readers on their toes and unsure of what will happen when the page turns. Lily has a scary psychopathic way about her. Her spying, her staring David down across the hallways, her ability to smirk at just the right moment where David is the only one to witness, and her ability to control her parents with her eleven-year old ways. Lily even becomes creative into making it appear in her parents eyes as though David is losing his own mind.  Throughout the story, the reader has growing suspicion that Kathy did not commit suicide, nor was her death an accident. However, David’s aunt and uncle, Julia and Vic chose to see Lily as an eleven year old without any maturity as to what is actually occurring within the household.

Nancy Werlin, in the Edgar Award and Mystery Writers of American Award winning novel, continues to have her readers wanting more, quicker. She grabs the reader’s attention to question and find rationales for the characters actions until the very end. She keeps the suspense and mystery alive until it is given to us in a surprising that does not leave all with a happy ending, just a new outlook on a second chance and living life with a past.