5 min readAug 8, 2026 08:19 PM IST
First published on: Aug 8, 2026 at 08:19 PM IST
What goes through the mind of a person who has just killed another is a subject that has long inspired — and morbidly fascinated — many authors. Fyodor Dostoyevsky took us into the mind of a tormented Raskolnikov in Crime and Punishment, Edgar Allan Poe’s The Tell-Tale Heart was narrated by a criminal, and one of Agatha Christie’s most popular works (we are not telling you which one) was told from the perspective of the criminal. Bestselling author Shari Lapena now steps into the shoes of the murderer and tells us not just who did it, but how and why, in her latest thriller, Getting Away With Murder.
A house worth killing for
Lapena is one of the new breed of domestic noir writers (others include Briana McFadden and Alice Feeney) whose books revolve around crime and conflict among friends and family, rather than elaborate face-offs between criminals and police or detectives. Getting Away With Murder fits right into this category. Its main characters are a husband and wife, Jill and Ted, who live in a luxurious brownstone in New York. Both love the house — at times, seemingly even more than they love each other, and all seems to be going well until a series of bad investments lands Ted in trouble.
Suddenly the couple are faced with the prospect of losing their beloved brownstone. A desperate Ted tries every avenue, but in the end it seems they might lose the house they love. And then they come up with a solution: murdering a close relative, passing it off as an accident, and using the inherited wealth to pay off their debts and live happily ever after. It is cold-blooded and cruel, but then they both love the house and are not particularly fond of said relative, and think the person deserves to die for refusing to help them in their hour of need.
The murder is the easy part
The couple execute the plan perfectly and leave no evidence. They seem to have got away with murder, until they start receiving anonymous messages that not only accuse them of the crime but also claim to have evidence of it. Faced with blackmail, and terrified of losing everything and going to prison, the couple try to find out who is behind the messages, and what follows is a total breakdown of their relationships with friends, relatives and, to an extent, even each other. And when one of their friends is killed in the couple’s attempts to track down the sender, things get messy.
Getting Away With Murder is really about the consequences of committing murder, even if one escapes the long arm of the law, and about the perils of greed. Lapena is in wonderful form as she narrates how Ted and Jill perceive the world and each other at different times. They start out deeply in love, their faith in each other shaken when Jill discovers Ted’s mistakes could cost them their house; they recover to commit murder, then drift apart again as they try to work out who their blackmailer might be.
“But she’s your best friend. And they have plenty of money, don’t they?” Jill regards him uneasily. “I don’t know. Maybe they don’t have enough. We didn’t.”
A feverish, suspense-packed page-turner
So deft is Lapena’s narration, and her depiction of the tension surrounding the couple and how their relationship flounders, that after a while one starts to feel a little sorry for them. The book spans 352 pages, divided into 58 short chapters, many packed with dialogue. Most revolve around Ted and Jill, but Lapena also lets us into the minds of people around them — their friends, a suspicious detective, their cleaning lady and her son, and even another murderer — often with disturbing insights into how greed changes people.
Getting Away With Murder is a classic, suspense-packed page-turner. Lapena’s language is simple, direct and designed for speed rather than depth. There are many twists and turns, and almost all have to do with a sudden change of mind rather than any dramatic act — the murder takes place early in the book. Most of the suspense is built around the uncertainty enveloping the characters and their circumstances. Will a detective notice something unusual? Will Ted or Jill have a nervous breakdown when confronted by accusations? Is there a camera secretly recording the couple? Is one of their friends so envious of their wealth that they will resort to blackmail?
Lapena ties it all up at the end, which has a twist of its own. This is a book for those who like fast-paced, tense thrillers with frequent shocks to the system. It is more of an inferno than a slow burn. Literary purists might scoff at the relative lack of ‘character depth’ and find too many coincidences for comfort in the plot (some will also feel that Lapena is being too judgemental of the wealthy), but most readers will be too busy racing through the pages, wondering if Ted and Jill get away with murder. Do they? We are not telling you. Getting Away With Murder is worth reading just to find out.
Getting Away With Murder by Shari Lapena
352 pp
Bantam
Rs 699
Shari Lapena’s Getting Away With Murder. 
Share
