Peter Swanson is one of my favorite authors. In fact, his last three books have landed on my year-end “Best Of” lists. Even though it is only March, I can say with confidence that his latest thriller, THE KIND WORTH SAVING, will be among my top reads of 2023.

This time, we revisit characters from Swanson’s 2015 bestseller, THE KIND WORTH KILLING, which introduced readers to then-police detective Henry Kimball and the suspect with whom he was obsessed, Lily Kintner. In this follow-up, Kimball is working as a private investigator, and Lily and her family will make an appearance later in the novel. Of course, Swanson will not let fans of these characters down as each will have opportunities to impact the narrative in a big way.

"THE KIND WORTH SAVING is a joy to read and is catnip for fans of top-level psychological thrillers. It will consistently keep readers off-balance as each wave of truth hits you and sends you down another road towards the next twist."

For Kimball, things will be set in motion when a former student of his, Joan Whalen, comes into his office. She asks him to look into her husband, Richard, who she believes is having an affair with his co-worker, Pam O’Neill. Kimball only lasted a year as a high school English teacher due to a tragedy that occurred in his class. A student pulled out a gun and attempted to hold everyone hostage. He then proceeded to kill a female student before taking his own life. Kimball physically froze and felt he should have intervened and perhaps saved a pair of lives. This drove him to a job in law enforcement that ended over the controversy surrounding the Lily Kintner case. But that’s another story…

Readers will be able to trust that Swanson has so much more up his sleeve than a mere private eye following a cheating husband story. To further complicate matters, the chapters that are told from Joan’s point of view take us back to a summer that her family spent at a beach resort off the Maine coast when she was just 15. That was the year she met Richard and his creep of a cousin, Duane, who disappeared off the jetty one night into the ocean, never to be seen again.

When Kimball begins his investigation on Joan’s behalf, he connects with the “other woman.” He finds Pam to be charming, even though she admits to being in a complicated three-person relationship. He is so enamored of her that he continues to see her, and they end up in bed together. When Kimball follows Richard and Pam to an empty property that their real estate firm is showing, he is met with the sound of gunshots. He is horrified to find the couple dead, and it appears that Richard shot himself in the temple. However, something just does not feel right about this situation, and he also has his doubts about Joan.

It is during the second half of the story that Lily and her family are reintroduced to readers. Kimball drops by to meet with them, in spite of their checkered past, and use them as a sounding board regarding the current case he is working. I will stop right here as I truly do not want to spoil the magical reveals that are to follow.

THE KIND WORTH SAVING is a joy to read and is catnip for fans of top-level psychological thrillers. It will consistently keep readers off-balance as each wave of truth hits you and sends you down another road towards the next twist. It does not get much better than this!