With a Vengeance Summary: A Chilling Tale of Revenge by Riley Sager

Last Updated: September 3, 2026

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Introduction: A Ruthless Revenge Thriller on Rails

A train thunders through a December snowstorm, its destination fixed, its passengers trapped.

That is the world of With a Vengeance by Riley Sager.

This With a Vengeance summary focuses strictly on what happens inside that speeding train.

A woman boards with a plan for justice.

By the time the journey ends, bodies have fallen, old secrets have split open, and the line between victim and executioner has blurred beyond recognition.

The year is 1954.

The Philadelphia Phoenix is a ghost of rail travel’s golden age—shabby velvet, dim corridors, and empty cars. Anna Matheson has bought every ticket.

She has paid off the crew.

What she has not planned for is the stranger in Car Four, or the first body dropping before the first round of drinks is finished.

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TL;DR

The Setup in Brief:

A young woman traps six people who destroyed her family aboard a private, high-speed train. Her goal is simple: deliver them to the FBI in Chicago. Then passengers start dying, and the real killers reveal themselves.

Anna Matheson’s father was framed for sabotaging a troop train in 1942. He died in prison. Her mother followed.
The six passengers either lied, forged documents, or took bribes to make the frame stick.
Seamus Callahan, Anna’s accomplice, lost his brother in the same 1942 explosion. He wants blood, not handcuffs.
Reggie Davis, a man claiming to be a lost insurance salesman, is actually an FBI agent with his own secret vendetta.
Kenneth Wentworth, the mastermind Anna hoped to capture, is secretly driving the locomotive all night, watching the chaos he set in motion twelve years earlier.

With a Vengeance summary Riley Sager (5)

With a Vengeance Summary: Full Story Breakdown

SPOILERS AHEAD. The full chain of events, including the ending, is detailed below.

December 1954. Anna Matheson boards the Philadelphia Phoenix, a once-luxurious streamliner now running its final route from Philadelphia to Chicago.

She has purchased every ticket. She has paid the crew to leave before departure.

Waiting inside the club car are five people who helped destroy her family, plus one unplanned guest: Dante Wentworth, her former lover, who arrived in place of his father Kenneth.

The five targets are Judd Dodge, the designer of a faulty engine; Edith Gerhardt, the Matheson family housekeeper who planted false evidence; Herb Pulaski, the factory foreman who looked the other way; Sally Lawrence, her father’s secretary who forged incriminating letters; and Lieutenant Colonel Jack Lapsford, who took bribes to label Arthur Matheson a Nazi saboteur.

Anna lays out her evidence. She intends to hand them all to the FBI when the train reaches Chicago. She does not intend for anyone to die.

Judd Dodge drinks a martini and collapses, foam spilling from his mouth. Panic ignites. The passengers realize the train will not stop, the crew is gone, and a killer may be walking the narrow corridors.

Then Edith Gerhardt is found smothered in the observation car, a drapery cord wound tight around her throat.

A man emerges from Car Four. He calls himself Reggie Davis, an insurance salesman who boarded the wrong train. When pressed, he drops the act and reveals his FBI badge. He claims he was assigned to monitor Anna. The survivors cling to him as their only protection.

Herb Pulaski, desperate and cornered, tries to take Anna hostage. Hours later, his throat is cut inside a locked room. A silver pin belonging to Anna’s dead father is planted at the scene. Seamus Callahan, Anna’s trusted accomplice, begins to look less like an ally and more like a threat.

Anna pieces together the first deception. Judd Dodge faked his poisoning using a chemical foam capsule and sleight of hand.

Relief collapses when she finds his real body crammed into a bathroom, strangled with brutal force. Seamus confesses. He killed Judd in a moment of rage. But he swears he did not touch Edith or Herb.

Terminally ill and hollowed out by grief, Seamus hands Anna his pistol. He walks to the rear platform and jumps from the trestle bridge into the frozen river below.

Anna is now alone on a train full of corpses and three still-breathing passengers: Dante, Sal Lawrence, and Lapsford. She follows the killer’s trail across the shuddering roof of the speeding cars. In the locomotive, she finds two men waiting.

Reggie Davis is not a grieving insurance salesman. He is the son of the engineer who died at the controls of the 1942 train.

He joined the FBI for one reason: to track down everyone responsible for his father’s death and execute them personally. He manipulated Judd into killing Edith, then murdered Herb and Judd himself.

Behind Reggie stands Kenneth Wentworth. The mastermind Anna wanted all along has been driving the train the entire night. Then Kenneth delivers the final wound.

Before Arthur Matheson married Anna’s mother, she was engaged to Kenneth. Tommy Matheson—the son Anna has mourned for twelve years—was Kenneth’s biological child. The 1942 sabotage was not just greed. It was a jealous man burning down the family that was supposed to be his.

The Phoenix screams into Chicago. Anna holds Kenneth at gunpoint as FBI agents flood the platform. Reggie confesses to the murders, shielding Seamus’s memory.

Sal Lawrence and Jack Lapsford are taken into custody. Bureau chief Ed Vesper, recognizing what Anna has survived, offers her a position with the FBI. She accepts, carrying no inheritance, no family name, and no lingering debt to the dead.

Similar Books

Murder on the Orient Express by Agatha Christie — The classic train-bound mystery where every passenger holds a secret and revenge is served cold, twelve stabs at a time.
The Only One Left by Riley Sager — A decaying mansion, a mute old woman, and a decades-old family massacre that may not be solved after all.
Survive the Night by Riley Sager — A car ride through the dark with a possible serial killer; the same claustrophobic tension of a vehicle that will not stop.
The 7½ Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle by Stuart Turton — A trapped setting, multiple murders, and identities that shift with every chapter.
The Woman in Cabin 10 by Ruth Ware — A journalist witnesses a murder on a luxury cruise ship, and no one believes the victim ever existed.
Last Train to Istanbul by Ayşe Kulin — Another historical train thriller where escape, identity, and life-or-death stakes ride the rails through mid-century Europe.

Summary by Chapter

SPOILERS THROUGHOUT. The chapter groupings below track the major narrative movements.

The Trap Springs (Chapters 1–9)

Anna Matheson boards the Philadelphia Phoenix with Seamus Callahan and executes the first stage of her plan. The five targets and Dante Wentworth settle into the club car.

Anna reveals their shared history—the 1942 troop train explosion that killed thirty-seven soldiers, including her brother Tommy, and the coordinated lies that sent her father to prison.

Each passenger’s role in the frame job surfaces through accusation and denial. The train leaves the station. The crew departs at a scheduled stop. The doors lock in the psychological sense long before any physical violence begins.

The First Body and the Stranger in Car Four (Chapters 10–21)

Judd Dodge appears to die from a poisoned martini. The survivors scramble to stop the train, discover the emergency systems are disabled, and realize they are utterly isolated.

Reggie Davis emerges from Car Four with a story that does not hold. Under pressure, he identifies himself as FBI.

Edith Gerhardt is murdered in the observation car. The group fractures. Anna begins seeing a figure in the corridor she believes is her dead brother, Tommy, watching her from the shadows.

Blood in Locked Rooms (Chapters 22–31)

Herb Pulaski attempts to seize control by threatening Anna. He fails. His body is discovered behind a locked door, throat cut, with Anna’s silver heirloom pin left as a calling card.

Suspicion turns on Seamus. The passengers realize the killer is moving between cars via the exterior roof hatches.

Reggie Davis conducts interrogations that serve his own hidden purposes. Anna and Seamus’s partnership begins to crack under the weight of unspoken truths.

Judd’s Real Body and Seamus’s Exit (Chapters 32–47)

Anna deduces Judd’s faked death, only to find his actual corpse. Seamus admits to strangling Judd but denies the other killings.

Terminally ill and unable to see a path forward, Seamus surrenders his weapon and leaps from the moving train to his death.

Sal Lawrence, presumed dead by the other passengers, reveals she has been hiding and helping Anna draw out the real killer. The trap narrows on Reggie Davis.

The Locomotive and the Final Confession (Chapters 48–53 & Arrival)

Reggie Davis sheds his FBI cover. He is the engineer’s son, and he has been executing everyone connected to his father’s death. Anna chases him across the roof of the speeding train into the locomotive, where Kenneth Wentworth waits at the controls.

Kenneth delivers the revelation about Tommy’s true parentage and his decades-old romantic vendetta against Arthur Matheson. The train arrives in Chicago.

Reggie confesses. Kenneth and the surviving conspirators face arrest. Anna accepts a future she did not plan for—an FBI badge and a clean slate.

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Characters in This Book

Character	Role
Anna Matheson	Daughter of Arthur Matheson who orchestrates the train journey to clear her father’s name.
Seamus Callahan	Anna’s accomplice whose brother died in the 1942 explosion; he seeks lethal revenge.
Reggie Davis	FBI agent and son of the 1942 train’s engineer who executes his own revenge plot aboard the Phoenix.
Kenneth Wentworth	Mastermind of the 1942 frame job who secretly drives the locomotive to observe the night’s events.
Dante Wentworth	Kenneth’s son and Anna’s former lover who provided the evidence that made the revenge possible.
Judd Dodge	Designer of the faulty engine who fakes his own death before being murdered.
Edith Gerhardt	Former housekeeper who planted false evidence against the Matheson family.
Herb Pulaski	Factory foreman who oversaw the engine’s construction and ignored critical flaws.
Sally Lawrence (Sal)	Arthur Matheson’s former secretary who forged documents under blackmail.
Lt. Col. Jack Lapsford	Retired military officer who accepted bribes to brand Arthur Matheson a saboteur.

The Big Ideas Driving the Story

Theme	How the Book Presents It
Vengeance vs. Justice	Anna plans a legal reckoning, but Seamus, Reggie, and Kenneth each pursue their own lethal version of payback.
Inherited Trauma	The 1942 explosion creates a chain of orphaned children—Anna, Seamus, Reggie—who carry the wound into adulthood.
Class and Corporate Greed	Union Atlantic Railroad’s cost-cutting and Kenneth’s industrial ambitions directly cause the deaths of thirty-seven soldiers.
Secrets and False Identities	Nearly every passenger hides a dual identity; Reggie poses as a salesman, Kenneth hides in the locomotive, and Sal fakes her death.
Romantic Obsession	Kenneth’s decades-long fixation on Anna’s mother fuels the entire conspiracy and the destruction of the Matheson family.

With a Vengeance summary Riley Sager (2) — With a Vengeance by Riley Sager Book Cover

FAQ

How does With a Vengeance end?

The train reaches Chicago, where Reggie Davis confesses to the murders to protect Seamus Callahan’s memory, Kenneth Wentworth is arrested after revealing Tommy was his biological son, and Anna Matheson is offered a job as an FBI agent by bureau chief Ed Vesper.

Who is the killer in With a Vengeance by Riley Sager?

Reggie Davis, the supposed FBI agent, is the primary killer who murdered Edith Gerhardt and Herb Pulaski; Seamus Callahan killed Judd Dodge in a fit of rage, and Kenneth Wentworth orchestrated the original 1942 sabotage that set all events in motion.

Why does Anna target six people on the train?

Anna Matheson targets five individuals who provided false testimony or forged evidence framing her father for the 1942 troop train explosion, plus she intends to capture Kenneth Wentworth, the mastermind who was supposed to be the sixth passenger.

Is With a Vengeance connected to other Riley Sager books?

With a Vengeance is a standalone novel and does not share characters or settings with Riley Sager’s other thrillers, though it continues his pattern of confined settings and layered identity reveals.

What is the 1942 incident in With a Vengeance?

A troop train manufactured by the Matheson family’s company exploded due to a faulty engine design, killing thirty-seven soldiers including Tommy Matheson; the incident was covered up by bribed officials who framed Arthur Matheson as a Nazi saboteur.

Does Anna get revenge in With a Vengeance?

Anna achieves her goal of delivering the surviving conspirators to federal authorities and clearing her father’s name, but she chooses not to kill Kenneth Wentworth despite learning he is responsible for her family’s destruction.

What happens to Seamus Callahan?

Seamus Callahan admits to killing Judd Dodge, then jumps from a moving train into a frozen river after giving his gun to Anna; his death is later covered by Reggie Davis’s confession to protect his reputation.

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