After a hit-and-run accident leaves Holly injured and her husband dead, a fixer for a high-powered guilty party offers Holly and her daughter a life of luxury in exchange for silence. Told from alternating points of view, Susan Walter’s Good As Dead explores how an unlikely group of people are bound to one another by a crime and its cover-up, and what happens when it begins to crumble.
I’ve never seen a book balance this many character across a three-month timespan so effectively, achieved due to Walter’s concise and matter-of-fact writing style. The chapters alternate between each character three months ago and then present-day, yet are kept short while revealing more about the character and moving the plot forward. I usually find such quick character shifting annoying and hard to settle into, but Walter does it expertly.
Due to the back of forth switch between each character, it took a while to get to the climax we know is building, but luckily it didn’t feel too annoying due to the short, informative, and intriguing information. Some parts were unfortunately somewhat boring, which is why this doesn’t get 5 stars from me, but it doesn’t last long before it flings into tension and becomes a real page-turner. There were times I gasped and said things such as “no!!!” out loud.
Good As Dead is a great idea written in a unique way in a successful manner. I note the author is a screenwriter and director with one film under her belt, as well as this one book, and I’d love to see this book made into a film due to how gripping the story and characters are. It was thrilling to watch unfold and to live inside the character’s heads, who were all incredibly different from one another. I will definitely look forward to whatever Walter writes next, be it film or book.
Thank you to NetGalley for an ARC. Good As Dead is out on October 1st, 2021.
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