NOW YOU OWE ME

Wright explores the ravages of psychopathy on society through the lives of two young killers.

The Zanetti twins, Benjamin and Corinthia, are marked by violence from an early age, witnesses to their father committing a brutal murder. Both disgusted and fascinated by this traumatic event, they begin to take out a latent propensity for violence on animals. When Corinthia threatens to escalate by killing their younger brother, Ben intervenes and Corinthia is gravely hurt, which spurs their mentally ill mother to begin locking Ben in the basement. Ben and Corinthia eventually run away to live with their wealthy grandmother, whose kindness is not enough to undo years of abuse and erratic behavior. When she dies, it doesn’t take long for them to go hunting female students from the local university, abducting and killing them. Several years later, a strong, savvy Black final girl–type named Amanda Taylor puts the pieces together to save her roommate, identifying the perpetrators of the string of murders. Only, this is not the full story. Wright throws in a pretty sharp twist about two-thirds of the way through the novel (and a less successful one at the end), but by that point, having spent so much time in the damaged lives and psyches of Corinthia and Ben has taken a toll. This book is a lot. It’s unflinching, but the violence is graphic and the psychoses incredibly disturbing. The writing is also uneven; there are almost comedic moments—“Ben saw red—and not just blood, either”—that clash with unwieldy sentences like this: “Equal parts sweet and short-tempered, Amanda was a walking paradox who always smiled before narrowing her dark brown eyes when she was angry.” There’s nothing wrong with variety, but this speaks to a larger unevenness in the novel’s style. It’s hard to tell, in the end, whether we are being asked to sympathize with the twins—and if we can, what does that expose about us?

An extremely dark exploration of serial killing. Even an admirable final girl can’t balance the ick.