Book Review: Kill All Your Darlings

Synopsis:

One of English professor Connor Nye’s brightest students, Madeline, disappears for two years and is presumed dead.

Connor has been struggling for years to write, still mourning his wife and son. But he finally manages to publish his first novel, a thriller about the murder of a young woman.

There’s just one problem: Connor didn’t write the book. Madeline, his missing student, did. Connor passed her manuscript off as his own, gambling that she would never return.

But she appears on his doorstep, alive and well, and threatening to expose his deception.

And the book implicates him in an unsolved murder that occurred two years ago because of the striking similarities between the crime and Connor’s just-published novel.

Soon Connor discovers the crime is part of a disturbing campus scandal and faces a dilemma with no good outcome. He can admit he didn’t write the book and lose his job. Or he can keep up the lie . . . and risk everything.

As the body count rises, must clear his name by unraveling the horrifying secrets buried in his student’s manuscript.

Sadly, sexual harassment still runs rampant in academia. And bestselling author David Bell explores the lengths to which those in power will go to cover it up.

Review:

David Bell has penned ten previous novels, including Somebody I Used to Know, Since She Went Away, Bring Her Home, Somebody’s Daughter, Layover, and The Request.

Academia is a subject with which Bell is familiar since when he’s not writing thrillers, he is a professor of English at Western Kentucky University in Bowling Green. He co-founded and directs that university’s Masters in Fine Arts in creative writing program. He received his Ph.D. in creative writing from the University of Cincinnati. He outlines his novels in order to have a security blanket just in case the book does not go where he plans, noting, “I’m always surprised by things in the book.” The title of his latest novel, Kill All Your Darlings, is actually a quote from William Faulkner, referencing the need for authors to judiciously and, perhaps, ruthlessly, edit their work.

Kill All Your Darlings explores several themes, among them the fact that Connor, a professor beloved by his students who lost his wife, Emily, and Jake, their fifteen-year-old son, suddenly and tragically, has been unable to write . . . and is on the verge of more loss. In academia, the rule is “publish or perish.” Connor published a collection of short stories while a graduate student, but has been at the university for seven years without publishing anything. Unless he does, he will not be granted tenure. Without tenure, the university will let him go. And it is highly unlikely that any other reputable college will hire him. “Why would they want a middle-aged guy with a huge blank spot in his publication record?” Connor just hasn’t been able to draft a book or even a few stories, understandably struggling just to keep functioning on a daily basis. Every time he sits down to write, the same story begins pouring out of him about a mother and child dying in the ocean. The chair of the English department, Dr. Preston White, has been more than Connor’s boss. He has also been a good friend, compassionate and patiently giving Connor time and space to work through his grief. “Preston the Politician,” as folks at the university call him both behind his back and to his face, even gave Grendel, the dog Preston initially rescued from a local shelter for his own family, to Connor, claiming his daughter was allergic. Preston showed up on Connor’s doorstep with Grendel, a leash, and dog food, announcing, “I think he’d be happy living with you.” Indeed, Grendel has been a wonderful companion for Connor, who has regularly taken him on walks in the neighborhoods around the campus. But Preston could only protect Connor for so long, urging him to “just produce something.”

Bell says he enjoys creating characters who lead “regular, recognizable lives” until “something tragic happens to them. They are forced then to figure out how to navigate that.” He thrusts his characters into a “situation that spirals out of their control. Can they be physically courageous? Morally courageous?” That is certainly the case with Connor. Bell uses him to illustrate that desperate times call for desperate measures . . . and dreadful results. Connor served as Madeline O’Brien’s thesis advisor, and when he read her manuscript he became “consumed with it.” Connor recognized that Madeline was a gifted writer and her talent eclipsed his own. Initially, he just wanted to mentor her and play a small part in the success she was sure to achieve. He expected to see her in class and discuss his notes about the book with her. But then she disappeared. And she didn’t return. Everyone believed she was dead. With the deadline for his tenure review bearing down on him, Connor typed Madeline’s handwritten manuscript and sent it to his agent, who, to his surprise, sold it to a publisher. As Kill All Your Darlings opens, Connor returns home after an event celebrating the publication of the book to find Madeline waiting for him there. In Bell’s capable hands, Connor’s life begins that proverbial spiral out of control.

Soon Connor is also visited by the police who have found disturbing similarities between the book, titled My Best Friend’s Murder, and a killing that occurred two years ago. Connor was questioned immediately after Madeline disappeared because he was apparently the last person to see her before she vanished. But now Detective Alicia Bowman wants to know what inspired Connor to write the novel, and is extremely intrigued by the fact that details about the murder of Sophia Greenfield, whose house Connor regularly walked by with Grendel, that were never released to the public are included in the novel. The parallels are uncanny, but Connor has no explanation for how they wound up in the book, and can only protest his innocence. Apparently, Sophia noticed Connor walking through the neighborhood, suspiciously peering into windows along the way. Connor heartbreakingly explains that his parents divorced and he was envied kids who had complete families. “I’ve always looked inside other people’s windows. . . .When Jake was born, I continued to look in windows. When I was on runs through our neighborhood or coming home from work, my eyes were still drawn to the light from inside other people’s houses. They looked tranquil and safe and warm . . . .Until one day I took the garbage out to the curb at our house. . . .I saw my life, my house, the way everybody else did. . . . And I understood that my life looked like those lives I’d been observing all those years. Why did I need to spy on others when my own life was the nest, the hearth, the cocoon? After Emily and Jake were gone, I started looking again.”

Bell has again crafted a compelling mystery full of surprising plot twists and complications. Connor relates his experiences in a first-person narrative that details how his profound grief about losing his family affected him. He also explains how he came to pass off Madeline’s manuscript as his own, as well as his interactions with Madeline, and tangential connection to Sophia and her husband. He relates his determination to prove that he may be a plagiarist, but he is not a killer. Connor is empathetic and endearing because he is, in some respects, hapless. He ignores his attorney’s advice, undertaking his own investigation and, in the process, putting himself in danger as more deaths heighten police interest in his activities. At his core, Connor is a decent, likeable man who did a terrible thing. He believably grapples with the choice he must make, knowing that the consequences for telling the truth about Madeline’s book will be grave, his career derailed. But he cannot allow himself to be convicted of crimes he did not commit, and it quickly becomes clear that he has placed his trust in the wrong people. Is he being set up?

Madeline is equally intriguing and sympathetic. She’s a young woman working to put herself through college who viscerally comprehends and becomes caught in the power imbalance between students and professors. She knows that she must complete her thesis and defend it in order for the degree she has worked so hard for to be conferred upon her. Can she bring herself to go along in order to get along? Like Connor, placing her trust in the wrong people places her in danger. But unlike some of her classmates, Madeline is very much on her own in the world, without a supportive family upon whom she can call for help. She becomes convinced the only way to protect herself is to disappear and only dares to return when she learns that her book has been published, with Connor credited as the author, in an effort to claim what is hers. She ingeniously takes steps to ensure that the truth will be revealed even if she does not survive to speak it herself. “Her experience in life had been that women aren’t listened to.”

Through his characters, Bell explores the imbalance of power in the #MeToo age. His story features reckless and egotistical male villains who engage in despicable behavior. They cross the line, abandoning professionalism and using their privilege to unfair and intimidating advantage. Female students know that reporting unethical behavior by faculty members is, at best, a dicey proposition. “It’s always gossip when a woman wants to talk about something” and they are all-too-often accused of voluntarily putting themselves in a position to be abused by men. Worse, professors use grades and, in Kill All Your Darlings, the threat of withholding thesis approval — which equates to failing to graduate — to ensure that their repulsive behavior goes unchecked. Bell does not shy away from exploring the repugnant conduct and indicting those guilty of it through deftly-timed and shocking plot developments.

Kill All Your Darlings is a fast-paced mystery, made even more engrossing by its timely subject matter, and unvarnished depiction of institutional power structures and the ways in which they victimize those who dare to challenge them. Bell’s compassion and affection for his characters is on display throughout the book, and enhances his richly layered and nuanced telling of their stories.

Once again, Bell demonstrates that he is a master of his craft who clearly takes Faulkner’s advice to heart. His writing style is strong, clear, and resonant, and readers will be turning the pages frantically to see if they have correctly guessed who killed Sophia Greenwood, and why, whether Connor will unburden his conscience by confessing the truth, and what the future will hold for him, depending on what he chooses to do.

Excerpt from Kill All Your Darlings

Chapter One

Connor

Present

Grendel doesn’t bark when my key hits the lock.

That’s when I know something is wrong.

Grendel, an eleven-year-old beagle mix, still barks at the mailman, the neighbors, squirrels, cats-any strangers at all, despite his age and flagging energy. And I can count on him barking with joy when I come in the back door every evening. If not for him, I’d always be greeted by stone-cold silence.

And that’s what I hear tonight.

I toss my keys onto the kitchen counter and slip my coat off.

“Grendel?”

Everything looks normal. Grendel’s food bowl is nearly empty, which means he’s eaten while I was out at the library. I usually manage to keep the kitchen clean, mainly because I don’t cook. The appliances are here, and everything appears to be in order.

But something feels wrong.

Without Grendel’s barking, the house seems unsettled.

Off.

A chill flash-freezes up my spine. I feel like an intruder in my own home, like I’ve walked in on something.

I move toward the front of the house, stepping carefully. The ancient floorboards squeak, each one sounding like a gunshot.

Grendel typically spends his time on the couch when I’m gone. When he hears something outside, he likes to lift his head and look out the picture window. He lets out a series of barks that make him sound much more vicious than he really is, and once that’s out of his system, he flops back down as though he’s just run twenty miles.

By now I should hear his collar jingling, his nails on the hardwood.

He’s an old dog, I tell myself. Old dogs don’t live forever.

“Grendel?”

When I reach the entrance to the living room, I freeze in place.

Everything is where it’s supposed to be. The lamp I always leave on is on. The furniture is arranged the way it’s been arranged for years. Nothing is disturbed. Nothing is broken.

And Grendel sits on the floor, his tail flopping back and forth when he sees me.

Everything is where it’s supposed to be except that someone is sitting in the recliner, legs crossed, hand gently scratching Grendel between the ears.

“Hello,” she says.

My mind is slower than my body. My body reacts instantly. My muscles tense. My hands clench. My knees bend into a defensive crouch, and adrenaline shoots through me like rocket fuel.

But my mind is still trying to make sense of this scene before me. A young woman with long hair dyed an unnatural shade of red sits in my recliner petting my dog. And she greets me like she’s supposed to be there, like I’ve asked her to wait for me to come home this evening. She wears a red coat, black jeans, and heavy boots, and her face is mostly obscured by large owllike glasses.

“Who the hell are you? You need to get out of here-”

The woman lifts her hand from Grendel’s head and holds it up, cutting off my words. Grendel bounds over, sniffs my shoes. He would have barked when she first came in, because he always barks the first time he meets someone. Then he gets used to them. He looks happy to see me.

“You know who I am, Connor,” she says, “and once you remember who I am, I think you’re going to know why I’m here.”

“I don’t know who you are,” I say. “But I am going to call the police if you don’t get out. If you didn’t take anything and didn’t hurt my dog, you can just leave, and I won’t press charges.”

She ignores my threat. With a slow theatricality, she lifts the glasses off her face and folds them, placing them carefully in her lap. She blinks a couple of times but remains quiet.

“If you want food, you can take it. Or money. I’ll give it to you. But you have to go.”

“Connor.”

And then I finally see it. Her face is suddenly familiar. The eyes are bright blue. The shape of her face. Thinner. Much thinner. But recognizable.

She must realize that I’m starting to really see her because she smiles knowingly, like a chess master who has just outfoxed a lesser opponent.

“No,” I say. “No. You’re not supposed to . . . I mean, you’re supposed to be . . .”

She lifts her eyebrows. “You mean, I’m supposed to be dead? Is that it? I’m supposed to be dead.”

“Not dead,” I say, my voice lower. “Not exactly dead.”

But she’s nodding. “Oh, yes. I’m supposed to be dead. I’m supposed to be written off. Forgotten. Erased. Tossed in a ditch or a river or a forest, my bones scattered to the winds and slowly returning

to the earth. Dust to dust and all that. Isn’t that where I’m supposed to be?”

“Yes,” I say. “That’s what we all thought. I’m glad that’s not true, but I’m . . . This is all very disconcerting. You’re here. . . .”

She leans forward and reaches behind her. She brings out a familiar-looking object and holds it up between us. She looks like she’s on television, presenting something to the viewing audience.

“Isn’t this what we need to talk about, Connor?”

It’s my book. The book that was published today by a major New York publisher. The one I was at the library reading from and signing. The one that represents a dream come true for me.

I don’t answer her question.

I come all the way into the room and sit on the couch across from Madeline O’Brien. I sit across from my former student, the young woman who disappeared almost two years ago, just months before she was supposed to graduate.

Chapter Two

“Madeline, are you okay?” I ask. “Are you hurt? Do you need me to call someone? My God, does your mother know you’re okay? Do the police?”

She turns the book around and studies the front. She runs her hand over the cover in a small circle, her skin against the paper making a rustling noise. “We can discuss all that in a minute. I want to talk about this book first.”

“How can we talk about anything except why and how you’re here? People have been looking for you. They’re worried about you. This is all a shock.”

“All in good time.”

Grendel has come back into the room, and he yawns and stretches out by my feet. He’s already bored by the rare appearance of a visitor in the house.

“My Best Friend’s Murder,” she says. “That’s a great title. Did you think of it yourself, or did the publisher come up with it?”

“It’s my title.”

“I remember you saying in class once that most writers don’t get to use the titles they want. The publisher always rejects them or changes them, so good on you getting this one in.”

“Do the police know you’re . . . here? Alive.”

“I’ve been following this,” she says, tapping the book. “Just because I was gone doesn’t mean I didn’t know what everyone in Gatewood was doing. If you can get to a computer, you can visit social media. I could keep track of my friends and family. What’s left of them. You. Other professors. You sure posted about this a lot on social media. Almost every day for the last six months. You must really want this book to sell. You used to tell us not to spend our time online, that social media is ruining us. I guess that all changes when you have a book coming out and you want to pimp it.”

“That’s part of a writer’s job,” I say. Like any teacher, I hate having my own words used against me.

“I guess so. Social media can be used for a lot of things. Promoting books. Searching for missing people.”

When she speaks and gestures, I see the Madeline I once knew. One of my best undergraduate students. Bright. Talented. Elusive. She talked a lot in class and wrote raw, vivid stories about troubled families with absent fathers, and the mothers were always calling the police on their lousy new boyfriends. It was hard for me not to assume they were autobiographical. In our conversations outside of class, she hinted at a difficult home life but never provided any details.

She looks like she’s lost about twenty pounds, and I wonder what she’s been doing for the past two years. Has she been in danger? Sleeping on the streets?

She also does one of the things I remember most about her, a nervous tic she occasionally resorted to in class. She did it only on rare occasions, usually when one of her stories was being discussed. Madeline reaches up and rubs her index finger across her right eyebrow and then pinches her thumb and index finger together, plucking a single tiny hair out of her skin.

“I bought a copy of the book this morning,” she says, lowering her hand from her forehead as though she’s just done the most normal thing in the world. “At Target. That’s pretty sweet to get your book there. I started reading it in the parking lot, and I’ve been reading it all day. Except when I went to the library to hear you speak.”

I thought so. She was standing in the back of the room, obscured by the people I knew and many who I didn’t. I remember seeing the slim young woman with the bright red hair.

It turns out I did know the woman. She was Madeline.

“You left before the book signing,” I say.

“I don’t like crowds. And there were a lot of familiar faces there. I needed to be careful.”

“How did you get in here?”

“The basement. You should get a dead bolt down there.”

“It’s Gatewood. Most people don’t even lock their doors.”

“That’s a mistake,” she says. “You never know who will come in.”

It’s strange. When Madeline disappeared at the age of twenty-two, I was anguished. Scared. Confused. Devastated that someone so young could fall victim to a seemingly random and horrible crime. Her disappearance-and apparent death-during her senior year of college brought back a lot of feelings I’d been working to move past, feelings that lingered from the losses I’d unexpectedly suffered when my wife and son died. For weeks after Madeline disappeared, I wandered around in a haze. And so did my colleagues on campus and my students. We were all shocked.

But I don’t feel relief with Madeline sitting in my living room. Her reemergence is so abrupt, so disconcerting, that I scramble to think of ways to get her out of the house. If she doesn’t want my help, if she won’t let me call the police, then I’m not sure I want her here at all.

I don’t want her here because I know what she really wants.

“I told you I started reading this book earlier today,” she says. “And I haven’t stopped. I haven’t stopped even though I know every single thing that’s going to happen.”

Chapter Three

Madeline

Spring, Two Years Earlier

Dubliners billed itself as an authentic Irish pub.

Madeline had never been to Ireland, had never been anywhere, really, but she felt certain the bar wasn’t close to authentic. Posters on the wall showed foamy crashing waves and lush green fields. Or else ads for Guinness. The bartender sometimes spoke with an accent, although he once told her he grew up two hours away in Lexington, Kentucky. And that was about it for authenticity.

But the students didn’t care about authenticity. The beer was cheap, and the pub was close enough to campus to walk.

Sometimes, when business was slow, the bartender didn’t bother to card. It didn’t matter to Madeline, who was twenty-two, or to her classmates in advanced fiction writing since everyone was a senior and old enough to drink legally. But it sure made Dubliners appealing to a lot of students, even though the place smelled like stale beer and fried food. And your shoes stuck to the floor pretty much everywhere you walked. Step-stick. Step-stick.

Dr. Nye-or “Connor” as he let them call him on those occasions when they all went out drinking-said anyone who was over twenty-one and wanted to go out for a beer should gather at Dubliners after their senior fiction-writing seminar. His treat. No student was going to pass up that chance. When professors offered to drink with students-and to pay-students showed up. Madeline had learned-from hard experience-there were professors she didn’t mind being around when they were drinking and professors she knew she needed to avoid when they were drinking.

Madeline ordered a pint of Harp and stood at the end of the bar, tapping her foot to the Lynyrd Skynyrd song a guy in a red flannel shirt had played on the jukebox. She had been hoping to speak with Dr. Nye after class anyway. No, not just hoped to speak with him. She needed to speak with him. She needed his advice. That was why she had come to Dubliners more than anything else. Not for the free beer-although she certainly didn’t mind that. But for his wisdom and knowledge.

Connor met her eye once but was surrounded by the three or four neediest students in the class. They were the ones who laughed loudest at his jokes, spent the most time in his office hours, wrote stories not because they wanted to write them but because they thought Connor would like them. Madeline felt certain he was smart enough to see through it. She gave him credit for being able to cut through the bullshit.

But she hung back, waiting. She wanted to talk to Dr. Nye, wanted to talk to him about her thesis.

She wanted to talk to him about so much more. But the thesis she’d turned in the day before was at the front of her mind. Almost the second she’d handed it over to him and walked out of his office, she regretted it.

She wished she hadn’t written about things that were so real and raw, even though that was exactly what Nye always told them to do.

But Madeline feared she’d been just a little too real and raw. . . .

And it was going to bite her in the ass. Hard. And she was doing what she always did, what she’d been taught to do since she was a child-look for the exit. Find the fastest way out. Don’t wait for trouble to pin you down.

No, she told herself. Try to stay for a change. Try not to run. . . .

Someone slipped up next to her, a guy she’d taken a few classes with over the years, Isaac Frank. Isaac wrote science fiction stories riddled with grammatical errors. Madeline wanted to pull her hair out when she read them. But he was a nice enough guy, someone she liked to talk to before class. Isaac was trying to convince his parents to pay for him to travel abroad over the summer before he went to graduate school. Not study abroad. Travel abroad. Travel. As in . . . just for fun. But Isaac had told her just the other day his parents were willing to pay for only three weeks of travel instead of the four he wanted. Madeline listened, pretending she could in any way relate to Isaac’s first-world problems.