53 pages • 1 hour read
Steve CavanaghKill for Me, Kill for You
Steve CavanaghFiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2023A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Themes
The Lasting Effects of Traumatic Events
The two protagonists of Kill for Me, Kill for You both experience traumatic events that change their lives. Amanda White’s life “implode[s] in loss” after the deaths of her daughter and husband (2), while Ruth Gelman is hospitalized in a psychiatric facility for seven years after her home invasion and her husband’s subsequent death by suicide. The novel posits that traumatic events have long-lasting effects that manifest in a variety of different ways including PTSD, physical symptoms of panic and anxiety, and other mental health crises. Amanda and Ruth’s stories demonstrate how dramatically these types of events can affect survivors’ lives, mental and physical health, and fundamentally shift their behavior. The loss of her daughter and husband brings “more dark horsemen” to Amanda’s life, including “unemployment, debt, addiction and pain that at times [feels] too great to bear” (2). Amanda’s grief becomes “an empty void that threaten[s] to consume her” (111). Cavanagh also pairs Amanda’s grief with anger: “[S]he want[s] to kill [Crone] so badly, it [has] taken over her life” (93). These passages frame Amanda’s grief as unbearable, all-consuming, and life-threatening. Cavanagh describes the trauma of Ruth’s home invasion and assault as equally debilitating. Because she feels that “her future” has been taken from her, Ruth experiences an extreme mental health crisis that results in her hospitalization for nearly a decade.
Cavanagh’s depiction of Ruth’s traumatic triggers—words and images that cause her to feel immediate and overwhelming panic—progressively escalates the dramatic tension, positioning the feeling of her post-traumatic status quo as untenable—something she believes she has to take desperate action to combat. By giving the reader access to Ruth’s internal thoughts, Cavanagh demonstrates the ways in which Ruth’s trauma feels entirely consuming and pervasive. When Ruth wakes up in the hospital after her attack, she immediately recognizes the change: “[E]ven then, in the midst of panic, Ruth knew this would never be over” (32). Ruth’s husband Scott echoes this idea as he struggles to deal with the guilt of killing Patrick Travers. Scott believes that the image of Travers’s corpse “[will] stay with him like a scar […] it [will] stay red and raw and never fade” (229). Similarly, Amanda attempts to kill Crone in the novel’s opening pages because she believes the police will not intervene and she knows that “she [will] never let [Jess’s murder] go” (77). The firm use of the word “never” in all three of these passages highlights the lengthy aftermath of traumatic experiences, as neither Ruth, Scott, nor Amanda feel able to release their pain, laying the groundwork for the rising action of Cavanagh’s plot in which all three characters find themselves pushed to violence by the effects of their trauma.
The Limitations and Implicit Bias of the Criminal Justice System
Amanda’s actions throughout Kill for Me, Kill for You are driven by her sense of injustice: She believes that Wallace Crone was able to escape prosecution for the murder of her daughter Jess because of his wealth and connections. Detective Farrow points to Crone as an example of how “some people, those with money and the ear of power, never pay for their crimes the way ordinary people do” (24). The novel stresses Crone’s use of not only money but also social status and connections in manipulating the law. Farrow explains that the overworked District Attorney’s office “[has its] hands full against a veritable army of Wall Street lawyers” with nearly unlimited time and resources. Crone has the resources to hire a legal team with the status and influence to “lean on the commissioner, who lean[s] on [the] captain, who [tells Farrow] to bury it” (27). These passages suggests and interconnected nervous system of privilege that allows the wealthy and powerful to manipulate the criminal justice system to their advantage. Farrow ultimately admits to Amanda that, because Crone can pay for an expensive legal team, he will not “pay for this crime” (27). The fact that Crone’s charges are dropped underscores Cavanagh’s narrative interest in the inherent implicit bias of the justice system.
Cavanagh nuances his thematic exploration by touching on the notion of emotional bias with regard to Amanda, who also receives preferential treatment in Crone’s harassment case against her. Although their circumstances differ significantly, both Amanda and Crone offer examples of ways in which the criminal justice system can fail to remain impartial. The novel begins with Amanda’s failed attempt to kill Crone. Although she’s actively violating a restraining order, Amanda is released the day of her arrest. Although she’s initially shocked by her quick release, she soon recognizes that “the prosecutor and the judge [have] taken pity on her because of Jess” (18). Later, when Amanda misses two months of court-ordered trauma therapy, Farrow warns her that her parole officer “should’ve breached you a month ago” and “only relented because I called her” (42). Cavanagh’s narrative suggests that Amanda receives preferential treatment from the police because of the deaths of her daughter and husband. By establishing the implicit bias and limitations of the criminal justice system within the world of the novel in his opening chapters, Cavanagh lays the groundwork for his protagonists’ desire to take justice into their own hands.
The Rehabilitation of Violent Offenders
Throughout Kill for Me, Kill for You, Cavanagh intersperses theoretical conversations between his characters, grappling with the question of whether people convicted of violent crimes such as murder and sexual assault can be rehabilitated. He characterizes both Ruth and Amanda as motivated by a desire for personal justice and a deep the perpetrator of the crimes against them from attacking others—a desire predicated on the notion that rehabilitation isn’t possible. Wendy tells Amanda that “pedophiles don’t just stop” (125) and that they “can’t be cured” (125). Billy (later revealed to be the serial killer known as Mr. Blue Eyes) repeats this idea, telling Amanda that Crone is sure to be caught eventually because “men like that never change” (311). Their controversial view that true rehabilitation is impossible for perpetrators of violence forms the foundation of Wendy (later revealed to be Ruth) and Amanda’s murder swap—the ideological means by which they justify their plans.
Cavanagh portrays Mr. Blue Eyes as a static character whose violent objectives and passions never change over the course of the novel—if anything he gets more dangerous with time. In the novel’s final pages, Billy brags that after police pressure pushed him out of New York City, he “continued [his] work elsewhere” (328), killing women across the country. Cavanagh mirrors this behavior in Ruth, who also pursues a lifetime of crime following her own assault, “killing again, and again and again […] for the pleasure” that it gave even when she knows her victims are not Mr. Blue Eyes (329). Cavanagh nuances the novel’s exploration of immutable human evil by drawing this connection between Ruth and her attacker and framing Ruth’s violence as a direct response to her trauma.
Cavanagh undergirds his exploration through the conversations of Detectives Farrow and Hernandez, who act as the voice of reason in each of the novel’s dual plotlines. The detectives assert not only that offenders cannot be rehabilitated, but that they actually get more dangerous with time—a perspective that reflects the primacy of violent crime in their daily lives. At the beginning of the novel, Farrow argues that “monsters” like Crone can’t change their behavior, “but what they do is make sure they don’t get caught” (25). Because Crone knows “the next time he [gets] caught there [will] be no way he [can] be saved […] he [makes] sure he [doesn’t] leave witnesses” (24). Farrow’s words reflect a belief that offenders like Crone are intentional and calculated in their actions, aware of the gravity of their offenses, because they intend to kill again. However, Cavanagh complicates the notion capacity for criminal violence is limited to the inherently evil. In response to Farrow, Hernandez admits that, if she had access to Crone, she would kill him, saying, “[T]here’s no chance I’m going to let him go and do that to somebody else” (86), suggesting that everyone can be capable of violence in the right circumstances.
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