2 Sentence Summary
“The Good Lie” by A. R. Torre is a thrilling crime novel full of twists and turns. The crime novel revolves around a series of murders committed by the Bloody Heart Killer, a serial killer who targets wealthy teenage boys.
Summary Read Time: Less than 4 minutes
Actual Book Length: 254
First Published in: 2021
Below is the detailed yet quick The Good Lie summary:
Part 1
The protagonist, Dr. Gwen Moore, is a renowned psychiatrist, known in the world of criminology as the “Doc of Death”. She specializes in treating clients with violent tendencies, helping them manage their predatory behavior. A significant part of her story involves dealing with the guilt over the death of one of her clients, John Abbott, and his wife, Brooke.
John, a pharmacist with a violent history, had expressed increasing hostility towards his wife, and Gwen fears she may have overlooked signs that he was a danger to Brooke. The couple is found dead in their home, Brooke from a heart attack and John from a self-inflicted stab wound, suggesting a murder-suicide scenario. Gwen suspects that John might have induced his wife’s heart attack.
While Gwen is grappling with this situation, a notorious serial killer known as the Bloody Heart Killer has been terrorizing the community. The BH Killer has murdered six teenage boys, all from wealthy families, and has just kidnapped his seventh victim. In a twist of fate, the seventh victim, Scott Harden, a senior at Beverly High School, manages to escape and identifies his captor as Randall Thompson, a science teacher at the same school.
Part 2
With Thompson apprehended, the media and the public, including Gwen, believe the case to be closed. But Robert Kavin, a defense attorney and the father of the BH Killer’s sixth victim, Gabe, is not convinced of Thompson’s guilt. Believing that the real killer is still out there, Kavin hires Gwen to create a psychological profile of the BH Killer, hoping to prove Thompson’s innocence.
In the process of investigating, Gwen and Kavin, who have spent a night together, grapple with personal and professional boundaries. They experience increasing tension, further complicated by the fact that they both seem to be hiding something from each other.
In a shocking twist, it is revealed that John and Brooke were the Bloody Heart Killer(s). Brooke had released Scott, and John had killed her. Robert subsequently murders John after discovering that John was the actual killer. Robert had suspected John because his deceased son Gabe was diabetic, and someone had continued to pick up his insulin prescriptions after his death.
In the end, Robert visits Gwen with the intention of killing her but ends up confessing instead. He believed that Gwen had known all along that John was the real killer. However, he decides not to kill her, and Gwen chooses not to turn him in.
