Review: Kill Your Darlings
Peter Swanson has put together a book that’s a little bit murder mystery, a little bit character study, and – for me – a little bit nostalgia trip. Kill Your Darlings starts with a murder and follows our characters back through time to show how we got here. He does a nice job both telling us who they are and what happened to lead us to the events that start the book.
It’s a little bit of a gimmick to work backward through time. I think it works pretty well here, partially because of the murder mystery connection. A mystery reader who found the style gimmicky could still imagine the building flashbacks as facts uncovered in investigation. I thought it was a reasonable way to build the characters.
Swanson ties his characters to specific ages and dates that are within a year of my birth. He also takes them on a junior high trip to DC that I also took. I wind up feeling a bit of extra nostalgia for that.
Overall an interesting story told with some panache.
Recommended.