The Silencer’s Wife is a crime novel by Katelyn Beck. The book tells the story of a young woman, Stacy, who fell in love with a serial killer and took on the profession to be closer to him.
The book starts with a confrontation between Stacy and her sister, Liz. We immediately learn that Stacy had broken all contact with her family for more than four years and that now Stacy is pregnant.
It immediately made me interested to learn what happened in these years, who was the father, was the pregnancy wanted and consensual, and what was going to happen next. Katelyn’s book indulged me, using the upcoming chapters to show the events that led to Stacy’s journey.
Stacy went to New York for an exciting life in a big city. With her IT education, she hoped to quickly find a job there. These IT skills helped Stacy, indeed, but in ways she could never have imagined.
Katelyn does a good job at portraying a happy enough family who both don’t want Stacy to leave and want her to realize her dreams. This combination of encouragement and attempts to change her mind seemed relatable and sweet.
Stacy looks for an IT job the best she can, rejecting all non-IT opportunities. But when she meets a man in a bar — it’s love at first sight. Stacy no longer cares about her IT career. She wants to be with this man, Mason, to the point of becoming a killer under his command.
I wasn’t sure if Mason returned Stacy’s feelings. He offered Stacy to work under him but told her what the job truly entailed only after she agreed. It was very suspicious, and Stacy’s actions were driven by emotions, so I didn’t trust her to make a good decision. But she is who she is. Later in the book, she had to deal with the consequences of her choices.
I won’t spoil anything that happened or whether Stacy succeeded in her endeavors. Suffice it to say, the book quickly established that Stacy and the rest of the killers had to fear not only the police but also the killers behind bars — for some reason, being sentenced to prison meant a death sentence even if Stacy were to be convicted for something unrelated like tax avoidance and even if she were to stay silent. This helped Katelyn to raise the stakes and make the book more interesting. The stakes were also raised again in a different way, which I don’t want to spoil, so the book definitely can bring tension and a sense of danger.
The other thing that was true for a big chunk of the book was that Stacy wasn’t sure if Mason loved her. She wanted to stay and find out, wanted to leave the bloody business, and suffered from having to lie to her family — all at the same time. It forced Stacy to make many bad decisions, which felt relatable. Yet, she also showed the ability to be very good at her job and had an eye for detail. This duality made her look human, even though it was often interrupted by the abilities she shouldn’t have had.
There were some heartwarming interactions between Stacy and other people who found themselves in the roles of killers. There were some heartwarming and heartbreaking talks between Stacy and her family. I enjoyed them all, although sometimes it was an enjoyment of a well-written, tragic scene. And sometimes, Stacy had to interact with foul, despicable people who even managed to severely hurt Stacy. That was well-written as well. So, the book has a lot going for it on the interhuman interaction front.
Yet, I must also mention the bad.
Katelyn attempted to put IT terminology into the book, and her attempt was flawed. I know that because I work as a programmer my whole life. Either Katelyn knew what she was talking about, but her attempts at simplifying the jargon for the lay reader sounded weird to my ear. Or Katelyn knew little of IT, and so she wrote what she wrote. This peeve of mine is a minor one. I also often write about things I know little about, so maybe some things I write in my own book sound silly to an expert. At the very least, Katelyn used this language to justify Stacy’s knowledge and skills, which is very important and welcome.
The other flaw of the text is the abundance of repetitions. Instead of using pronouns more often and being more inventive, Katelyn was happy to repeat the same name of a character or word several times in the same paragraph, and then sometimes in the next paragraph.
Stacy’s IT education is the extent of Katelyn’s explanation of Stacy’s skills. Her other skills, such as stealing and being undetected, were left unexplained. I guess Stacy is simply a savant. The book does show some growth of Stacy, which is good, but I would’ve preferred to see more of it.
The other thing is that Katelyn’s text is not free of grammatical and punctuation errors.
The penultimate chapter 19 is heroic but way too far-fetched for my taste. In it, Stacy did something even more unbelievable than usual, and this realization prevented me from suspending my disbelief or enjoying the chapter. But the final chapter 20 is fine, so you may say that the book has a satisfying ending.
Overall, I enjoyed the book. It has its flaws, but they cannot put a shadow over every positive aspect of it. If you enjoy books about trying to get out of a difficult situation, then you may enjoy Katelyn’s work.
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