Rules for Perfect Murders - Peter Swanson Page 0,71

paperbacks, the early Ellis Fitzgerald novels that I’d started reading when I was about ten years old. I didn’t have to get those particular books from Annie’s Book Swap because my mom was an Ellis Fitzgerald fan and bought all the books herself. The early ones were really good, like funnier Ross MacDonald novels. And it was a fairly big deal back then that the detective was a female, and a tough, uncompromising one at that. Brian had told me several times that in the first draft of the first Ellis Fitzgerald novel, The Poison Tree, Ellis had been a man. His agent told him that the book was good but that it was a little familiar. He made Ellis a woman without changing anything else, and the book sold.

I pulled out the paperback edition of The Sticking Place. It was the fifth Ellis Fitzgerald book and the one that won the Edgar Award. For fans, it was either their favorite book in the series, or their least favorite book. For me, it was my favorite, at least it had been when I’d first read it as an adolescent. At the end of the previous book in the series, Temperate Blood, Ellis’s on-again, off-again boyfriend, Peter Appleman, is killed by a member of the Boston Mafia. In The Sticking Place, Ellis gets her revenge, carefully and brutally murdering everyone who had been remotely involved in Appleman’s death. The book has very little in common with the other books in the series. There are no buffoonish clients, or Ellis witticisms; it has more in common with one of Richard Stark’s Parker novels.

I took The Sticking Place, along with a fresh bottle of beer, with me to my sofa. The book had been read so many times that some of the pages were slipping away from the cracked binding. The creased cover was black, with an image of a revolver, its cylinder cracked open to reveal six empty spaces where the bullets had been. I opened to the title page, not surprised to see my mother’s name, in her handwriting, in the top right corner. Margaret Kershaw, and the date she’d bought the book. It had been July of 1988. So, I’d been thirteen years old, and it was almost certain that I’d read this book as soon as I could get my grubby hands on it, probably immediately after she’d finished. I think I remember her telling me it was very violent. I’m sure that made me all the more eager to read it for myself.

The book was dedicated to Brian Murray’s first wife, Mary. I’d never known her, but Brian told me once that the reason he dedicated almost all his books to her was because she’d sulk for days if he didn’t. He told me that divorcing her was good for many reasons, but mostly because he was now free to dedicate books to other people in his life.

I began reading the book and was instantly hooked. It opens with Ellis meeting with the head of the Boston Mafia at the bar at the Ritz and handing him a list of names. “Either you’ll punish them, or I will. It’s up to you.” He scoffs at her, tells her that she needs to forget it and move on. The rest of the book is her single-minded pursuit of those responsible for her boyfriend’s death. It’s suspenseful and violent, and Ellis comes across as slightly psychotic. After each killing, she applies lipstick and kisses the dead man on the cheek, leaving an imprint. The book ends with her at the Ritz again, drinking chardonnay with the Mafia head, who apologizes for underestimating her, and together they agree that balance has been restored. She’s gotten her revenge. He does ask her about the lipstick. “I thought it would give the police a kick,” she said. “Nothing they like more than some killer with a trademark. Makes them think they’re in a Clint Eastwood movie.”

I finished the book at just past midnight, kept thinking about trademarks. Ultimately, that was what Charlie’s murders were about, leaving a mark of a kind, a signifier that told the world that the murderer was more important than the victim. Charlie might have been inspired by a sense of revenge, or justice, when he’d asked me to kill Norman Chaney. But now it was about him. And about my list. And about me, too, I guess. What kind of person puts himself above his victims? What kind