Haven’t Killed in Years Summary: Amy K. Green’s Thriller
Introduction
A severed left forearm arrives in a cardboard box on a quiet Boston doorstep, addressed to a name its owner buried twenty years ago.
That single delivery sets Amy K. Green’s Haven’t Killed in Years in motion.
The book follows Gwen Tanner, a corporate recruiter who keeps her routines small and her history smaller.
She is really Marin Haggerty, daughter of an imprisoned serial killer, and someone has just discovered it.
Set across Greater Boston, the novel blends psychological suspense with a dry, sardonic voice.
It tracks a stalker’s escalating game while a woman tries to decide how much of her father’s legacy she actually carries.
TL;DR: The Short Version
- The premise: A woman living under a false identity receives severed body parts from someone who knows her real name.
- The pressure: Calling the police would expose her past, so she investigates alone.
- The twist engine: Every clue points back to the night her serial-killer father was arrested.
- The tone: Dark humor, first-person narration, and fast, escalating suspense.
- Core ideas: Inherited trauma, manufactured identity, and true-crime obsession as entertainment.
Who Should Read Haven’t Killed in Years?
This book suits readers who prefer psychological suspense built on identity rather than procedure. The narrative stays in Gwen’s first-person perspective, so information arrives as she learns it.
Fans of dark comedy will find the tone dry and deadpan, even during graphic scenes. The pacing is fast and linear, with short flashbacks to the treatment facility and journal entries breaking up the present timeline.
Readers interested in true-crime culture, family legacy, and cat-and-mouse plotting are the most direct audience. Those who avoid severed-limb descriptions, knife violence, or child-in-danger material may find the content intense.
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Haven’t Killed in Years Summary: The Full Story
Spoilers ahead. This section covers the plot, including the ending.
Gwen Tanner has spent nearly two decades as someone else. Born Marin Marie Haggerty, she was nine when her father, Abel Haggerty, was convicted of eight murders and sentenced to life at Edgar Valley Prison.
Her mother, Reanne, served twenty years for aiding and abetting. Detective James Calhoun and lawyer Oswald Shields legally erased Marin’s name and placed her in a Pennsylvania treatment facility as Gwen Tanner.
On the day Reanne is paroled, a box appears outside Gwen’s apartment. Inside is a severed left arm and a card reading “Hi, Marin.”
Reporting it would expose her, so Gwen uses salad tongs to dump the arm in an alley. A second box arrives days later, and she drops it into a mailbox in Forest Hills.
To investigate without revealing herself, Gwen poses as the pen-pal girlfriend of an inmate named Connor Nettles and visits Edgar Valley. There she meets Dominic Joyce, who runs the commercial “Abel Haggerty Murder Tour” and visits Abel weekly while researching a book.
Gwen and her twenty-one-year-old pottery-studio co-worker Porter take Dominic’s tour, ending near the abandoned Abbington family home. At a college party hosted by Dominic’s stepbrother Jake, Gwen meets Elyse Abbington, the surviving member of that family.
News then breaks that the severed arms belonged to Shields and Calhoun, both murdered. Messages in fake blood appear on Gwen’s door: “LIAR,” then “WHO’S NEXT?”
At a later party, Jake leads guests in a knife game that involves slicing participants’ stomachs. Gwen retreats to Saugus to stay with Reanne and Reanne’s new husband, Gustus Trent.
The stalker follows. Porter finds Reanne dead with her throat slit, and planted evidence frames him. Gwen helps the panicked Porter transport the body to a remote New Hampshire pond, where she weights it down and submerges it.
Gwen and Dominic drive to Pennsylvania to search storage units for her old facility records. The file is missing, meaning someone reached it first.
During that trip, Dominic sees the raised “demon cross” scars Abel carved into Gwen’s side. He realizes she is Marin Haggerty.
A viral video then surfaces, titled “I AM MARIN HAGGERTY.” The blonde woman claiming the name is Natalie Shea, Gwen’s former roommate at the treatment facility.
Elyse also confesses something she has never told anyone. She was not at the park during her family’s murder as official records state.
Eight-year-old Elyse had watched through a fence as nine-year-old Marin struck ten-year-old Cody Abbington with a rock. Calhoun buried that detail to prevent public outrage and protected Elyse’s testimony.
Gwen tracks Natalie to a Revere Beach motel. Natalie admits she never killed anyone; a man named “Wesley” manipulated her from the main house of her rental property.
Gwen searches Natalie’s apartment and finds her dead, her throat cut the same way as Reanne’s. Natalie’s journal identifies “Wesley” as an alias used by Jake Calloway.
Gwen visits Dominic’s terminally ill mother, Barbara Cook, in Franconia, New Hampshire. An old photograph links Oswald Shields to Jake’s adoptive family.
The truth lands: Jake Calloway is Cody Abbington. Marin’s rock did not kill him.
Cody survived with severe brain damage, woke in a Maine hospital with amnesia, and was illegally adopted. Psychedelic drug use in his twenties unlocked his memory of the massacre.
He then tracked down Shields, Calhoun, Reanne, and Natalie, killing them in a revenge scheme designed to frame and destroy Marin.
Gwen confronts Jake at Elyse’s apartment, and he knocks her unconscious. She wakes handcuffed in Dominic’s van as Jake drives toward the abandoned Abbington house.
Inside the kitchen, Jake has bound and gagged Dominic and Porter. He brings Elyse there intending to force her to execute Gwen.
Elyse refuses and tries to stop him. Jake strikes her with the butt of his knife and knocks her down.
Jake drags Gwen to the backyard swing set, the exact spot where she struck him twenty years earlier, and begins choking her.
Gwen adopts her father’s cold persona and taunts Jake for lacking a real killer’s instinct, offering to help him murder the others. When he hesitates in rage, she uses the swing set as leverage and flips him over.
She handcuffs him to the frame, takes his knife, frees Dominic and Porter, and calls the authorities.
Jake pleads guilty to four counts of murder. Two weeks into his sentence at Edgar Valley, he is found strangled in his cell, a hit arranged covertly by Abel Haggerty.
Gwen keeps the name Gwen Tanner and closes the door on Marin. She rebuilds her life with Porter, Dominic, and a slowly healing Elyse.
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Characters in This Book
| Character | Role |
|---|---|
| Gwen Tanner / Marin Marie Haggerty | The narrator and protagonist, living under a legally changed identity in Boston as a recruiter. |
| Jake Calloway / “Wesley” / Cody Abbington | The antagonist, who survived Marin’s childhood attack, grew up under a new identity, and orchestrated the revenge murders. |
| Dominic Joyce | A true-crime tour guide who runs the “Abel Haggerty Murder Tour” and visits Abel weekly to research a book. |
| Elyse Abbington | The publicly recognized survivor of the Abbington family massacre and Cody’s older sister. |
| Porter | Gwen’s twenty-one-year-old co-worker at the Painting Pots ceramics studio. |
| Natalie Shea | Gwen’s former roommate at the East Buford facility, who claimed Marin’s identity in a viral video. |
| Abel Haggerty | Gwen’s father, an incarcerated serial killer serving life at Edgar Valley Prison. |
| Reanne Haggerty | Gwen’s mother, paroled after twenty years and married to Gustus Trent. |
| James Calhoun | The detective who arrested Abel and arranged Gwen’s new identity. |
| Oswald Shields | Abel’s disbarred former lawyer who processed Marin’s legal name change. |
| Gustus Trent | Reanne’s second husband, whom she married while incarcerated. |
| Barbara Cook | Dominic’s terminally ill mother in Franconia, New Hampshire. |
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Books Like Haven’t Killed in Years
The Serial Killer’s Daughter by Alice Hunter ā A protagonist builds a normal life while hiding that her father is a notorious serial killer whose crimes resurface.
My Sister, the Serial Killer by Oyinkan Braithwaite ā Matches the deadpan, pragmatic voice used while handling bodies and complicated family loyalty.
Notes on an Execution by Danya Kukafka ā Examines how serial killer violence echoes through survivors, children, and families long after the crimes.
First Lie Wins by Ashley Elston ā Centers on a resourceful woman managing layered aliases inside a high-stakes psychological game.
The Quiet Tenant by ClĆ©mence Michallon ā A captivity narrative told partly in the voice of a survivor, focused on the aftermath of a serial offender.
Bright Young Women by Jessica Knoll ā Reframes a famous serial killer case around the women affected and the culture that mythologized the killer.
Book Snapshot
- Genre & Subgenre: Thriller / Mystery & Crime Fiction; Psychological Thriller, Dark Comedy, Serial Killer Noir
- Core Narrative Tropes: Hidden identity, sins of the father, resurfaced past, stalker cat-and-mouse, secret villain, true-crime satire
- Tone & Atmosphere: Sardonic, darkly funny, tense, claustrophobic
- Primary Conflict: Gwen must identify and stop a stalker mailing severed limbs and killing people from her past while keeping her identity hidden
- Pacing Style: Fast-paced linear timeline with brief childhood flashbacks and journal entries
- Book Structure: Three parts and sixty chapters
- Publisher: Berkley
- Publication Date: November 18, 2025
- Pages: 368
- ISBN-10: 0593953495
- ISBN-13: 978-0593953495
- Author Background: Amy K. Green is a Massachusetts-based suspense author known for psychological thrillers with sharp, darkly comic narration.
