Have you read Nine Lives by Peter Swanson? Need a plot summary? Have questions about why the killer wanted to kill all those people? Have comments about the connection between Nine Lives and And Then There Were None? Need a list of characters? You have found the right place on the internet, so settle in and let’s talk! Welcome to my Spoiler Discussion for Nine Lives.
Spoiler Discussion and Plot Summary for Nine Lives
Feel free to read the whole post but if there is specific information you’re looking for, here’s a list of what is in the post:
Plot Summary for Nine Lives
What Was the Ending of Nine Lives?
What Was the Motive in Nine Lives?
Spoiler Discussion for Nine Lives
Plot Summary for Nine Lives
Who gets the list?
Alison is meeting her married lover, Jonathan. She receives a list of nine names in the mail.
Arthur, a nurse injured in the car accident that killed his husband Richard, also receives the list.
So does Ethan, an aspiring songwriter, also gets the list as does Jessica, an FBI agent, who will soon be testifying in the William Brandy murder case. She’s sleeping with a married co-worker, Aaron. Caroline, a professor, is also on the list.
Jay, an actor, also gets the list. It throws it away. He follows a girl around planning to murder her. Matthew, a dad of three, gets the list as does Frank, owner of a resort in Maine.
That’s Only Eight People. Who is the Other One? Good Question!
Victim #1: Frank
Frank is murdered in the beach after being asked if he knows why he is going to die. The police find the list in his hand.
Aaron tells Jessica that someone on the list just died. Jessica calls as many people on the list as she can and gets a few copies of the list for forensic analysis.
Matthew contemplates an affair. Ethan contacts Caroline about the letter and they bond over poetry.
Victim #2: Matthew
Matthew goes running the next morning and also ends up dead. Aaron tells Jessica about Mathew’s murder. Ethan and Caroline get put into protective custody.
Hello, Potential Victim Nine!
Jack, an author, finally gets his list, which had been sent to his old address. He thinks he should call back the FBI agent who had called asking about it. He has coffee with Margaret, a new neighbor.
Sam Hamilton, the detective on Frank’s case, learns that it went federal due to Matthew’s murder. Sam is an Agatha Christie fanatic and decides to re-read And Then There Were None. Good call! (Check out my list of other thriller titles inspired by And Then There Were None!)
Victim #3: Arthur
Arthur is killed by a device releasing carbon monoxide.
Jessica and Aaron discuss the murders and any connection between the victims. Jessica decides to go hide out at a friend’s cottage in Maine.
Alison gets a call from Jonathan, whose wife has left him. They plant a trip to Bermuda. Jessica heads to Maine. Sam is convinced that Frank is the key to the case, as he was killed first by someone who hand delivered the list.
Tod Fischer, a hitman, gets a call from Linda about his next target: Jessica, who has fled to Maine. Ethan’s friend Caroline tells him there was a third murder.
Victim #4: Jessica (and our first viable clue)
Jessica calls Arthur’s father and asks him about a man named Gary Winslow, her father. Tod the hitman finds Jessica. Jessica calls her father who alludes to something bad he and Arthur’s father did. The hitman shoots Jessica.
Jack goes to Margaret’s house for dinner. Aaron decides to follow Jessica’s lead: the connection between her father and Arthur’s. Aaron also find out that Jay Coates has been located in Georgia. He also got the list and threw it out. But Georgia Jay was lying and is in a bit of a pickle when the FBI shows up to discuss the list with him.
Alison is in Bermuda with Jonathan.
Hmmm maybe Ethan’s mom also knows something…
Ethan asks his mom if anyone would want to get revenge on her and she hesitates a bit. Caroline’s mom tells her about a disturbing recurring dream where she and a group of kids ties up a girl and makes her walk the plank.
Victim #5: Jay
Jay the actor contemplates another murder. He goes out and gets murdered, hit with a steel bar. Jay, the tech guy, is in custody being questioned about receiving the letter which he now says he didn’t receive.
Sam is on the case!
Sam flies to Florida, still reading And Then There Were None. He needs to figure out the connection of the people in the list. He’s interested in Jack, the oldest list member, and Frank, who was killed in a more gruesome manner. Sam visits Frank’s sister who tells him that years back, a girl drowned very near where Frank was murdered.
Ethan and Caroline decide to meet at some remote cabins in Illinois.
Jack calls the FBI saying he does remember a connection to Frank. He and his family stayed at the Windward Resort in 1956. Jack doesn’t mention what happened to his sister there.
Victims #6 and 7
Ethan and Caroline are killed by poisoned wine. Only Jack and Alison are left.
Sam finds the story of the drowning victim. Faye Grant was ten, staying at the resort with her mother and brother.
What is the Ending of Nine Lives?
Jonathan, Alison’s married lover, is actually Jack, from the list. Jack tells Alison a story of how his sister drowned, and his real name.
Some backstory: Jack made his list, comprised of the children of the group of kids he holds responsible for the death of his sister. Then he goes to find Alison. (For some reason, he embarked on a year long relationship with Alison before eventually killing her. Thanks, Susan, in the comments, for straightening me out on the Alison issue!)
Back to the ending: Jack flies back to Hartford and kills his neighbor Margaret’s obnoxious husband. Then he drives to the Windward Resort, takes pills, and lets himself drown at the jetty just like his sister did.
What Was the Killer’s Motive in Nine Lives?
In And Then There Were None, the killer leaves a note explaining his crimes.
Sam, who’d just re-read the book, searches the resort library and finds a note in a copy of Peter Pan.
Jack’s note explains that when he was a child in the 1950s, he was part of a group of kids who called themselves the Pirate Society while on vacation in Maine. They tied Jack’s sister Faye up and puts her in a sea cave. If she could escape before the tide comes in, they would let her join their group.
But poor Faye dies and decades later, her brother Jack decides to take revenge on the group. He kills Frank in a painful manner and on the site of Faye’s drowning, as Frank was in the group. The other victims were children of the original Pirate Society.
Jessica actually survives the shooting and recovers.
Spoiler Discussion for Nine Lives
My questions:
Why did Jack even make the list? He was also member of the Pirate Society. He knew where his sister was when his mother asked him and might have had a chance to save her but didn’t say anything.
If ANYONE should feel guilty about what happened to Faye, I think it was Jack.
He was quietly guilty all these years and then it was his own daughter’s death that suddenly made him want to seek revenge on the relatives of the people he holds responsible for his sister’s death?
Still, why wait so long? And why didn’t he think that losing his own daughter so tragically was some kind of karma for the terrible thing he did? I don’t know, his motive didn’t really hold together for me. Wait, there’s more…
Why didn’t he get also revenge on the drunk driver responsible for his daughter’s murder?
That would have made a lot more sense.
Why does he put Alison on the list? ANSWERED!
His explanation of that also didn’t make sense to me. She worked at the same restaurant as his daughter and he just randomly decides to kill her, but wants to get to know her first? Ooohhhkay. (EDITED: Thanks to Susan, who in comments pointed out that Alison is on the list because her father, Daniel, is one of the people Jack holds responsible for his sister’s death.)
I am also confused by the two Jay Coates. ANSWERED!
Did Jack kill the wrong Jay Coates on purpose because he decided that that guy was a psycho? Why were the police questioning the other Jay? Did they think he was the killer?
Thanks to Lisa who, in comments, pointed out that Jack did kill the right Jay (Hollywood Psycho Jay) and that IT Georgia Jay was lying about the note and being questioned for lying to the FBI. It made more sense to me that Jack found the wrong Jay and killed him anyway, but that is not what happens!
Why have Jessica survive? I have nothing against her, but … why? She’s a Final Girl now.
Typos in the book
Sharp-eyed readers in my comments (thanks!) noticed several editing mistakes with character names.
First, Aaron Berlin (on page 11) ends up with the name Aaron Levin by the end of the book (page 318).
In the comments, JC Burcham also points out that one minute Jonathan is having drinks with Alison. Then the next minute, he’s with Caroline? Then, on the next page, he’s back to Alison.
Those are my questions. If you can answer them, or have a theory or questions of your own, PLEASE leave a comment and respond to comment replies so you’ll know when someone responded!
Looking for other books about a group of people who get murdered one by one?
Check out my review of One by One by Ruth Ware and my Spoiler Discussion of One by One!
Wait, did I miss something? I thought he DID kill the correct Jay Coates. The other one just wanted attention and, even though he didn’t get the letter with the list of names, he lied and said he did. The Hollywood psycho dick Jay did get the letter but tossed it–and didn’t return Jessica’s call. Or, that’s the way I remember it. Also: TOTALLY agree: why didn’t he just kill himself over the guilt? I want to read your review of this book. I love Peter Swanson and was hugely disappointed by this book. While the writing was spot-on terrific and the pages flew, the plot was super lame.
LISA thank you for showing up and helping me figure this out. I was WRONG about the Jays. I missed the part where IT Georgia Jay admits to lying about the note. For some reason I thought that Jack was trying to find the right Jay, followed Psycho Jay and realized he was the wrong Jay but thought he needed killing anyway lol. But IT Jay was just a random attention seeker.
The ending could have been better. I get that Jack was a little off but his reasoning for killing these people (especially Alison!) didn’t really make sense to me.
My review will be up on April 11 but basically I said that I didn’t love the narrative structure of this one. It was victim POV, victim POV (repeat) murder, murder, clue, strange resolution. And that the ending didn’t really hold together for me.
My favorite new word which you invented is Ooohhhkay, which was what this book was (maybe not sure) and could have been so much more. I must have missed something but why did Jessica pick that spot to hide out? Wouldn’t she have been safer like in Paris or the Caribbean? I got so confused and didn’t care about any of the characters. Maybe this was done because we knew that they would all die. But Jack finds Allison and decides to have a sex relationship with her even though he knows he will kill her? How did Jessica survive her killing.? She was shot and we were told 0 after that. Did she come back to life for a happy ending. I’m confused about the hired killers? Did I miss something? Who are they in relation to Jack. My word from my grandma is oh vey. (This book needed a rewrite before publishing it, Peter Swanson and I am a big fan. ) You know what would have been a better ending for me is that if the body count piles up and Psycho Jay then kills off Jack before Jack drowns himself. And also why didn’t Jack just drown himself since he was the MOST guilty one. Plus, why didn’t any of these kids now adults remember the drowning– that sounds traumatic. One of them had the pirate dream with the plank which made me realize the connection. Like I said OH VEY.
I think a friend of Jessica’s had a house in Maine? Maybe she wanted to hide out AND investigate the first murder? And YES I agree that Psycho Jay was underused. Love the idea of a standoff between him and Jack.
The Jack/Allison thing was the weirdest to me.
I have FEELINGS about this book! I felt like it was all over the place and some behavior made no sense. First, why would the FBI agent hide somewhere else? I feel like she would have spotted an anomaly a lot easier at home. Also, her lack of foresight was also disturbing, surely she should have assumed she was spotted and that whatever happened next was a trap. The fact that he felt like he needed to punish everyone else like he wasn’t a part of the death of his sister felt contrived as did wanting to kill Allison. It was ok if you didn’t think too hard but I did so it was disappointing for me.
Ha – I am here for all the feelings. The hiding out was weird, like the person in the horror movie hearing a noise and opening the door to check. WHYYYY? And I agree with you that a lot of things didn’t make sense to me: the motive, his relationship with Allison, waiting so long to get revenge…
I may just be overthinking this or it’s a typo or something, but at the end of Jack’s letter he writes “Jack Radebaugh nè Jonathan Borland Grant 1944-2014.
which sorta implies to me that’s his life span meaning he committed suicide in 2014. Does that mean the whole novel was set in 2014??
enjoyed the book a lot and raced to the finish but the more I think about it the more confused I get. Why make the list? Why did Jessica survive?
These posts are ALL about the overthinking (and for the overthinkers) so welcome!
I didn’t catch that at all. You’re right – the book says “Jack/Jonathan” wrote the letter on the last night of his life. Maybe the author wanted to set it pre-pandemic? But okay (fellow over thinker) I checked my phone calendar and based on the dates at the beginning of each chapter, the dates match up with 2016. (The first chapter is dated Wed Sept 14 and Sept 14 was on a Wednesday in 2016 and again in 2022.
My only other thought is that Jack somehow ceased being Jonathan in 2014, or that Jack metaphorically killed Jon but that’s clearly not the case, as doesn’t Jack continue to pretend to be Jonathan?
So … does anyone have insight into this?
As for the list, I don’t understand why he waits so long to do this after his sister’s death. And Jessica, idk. She is just lucky, I guess.
Hey there! Late to the convo but I just finished nine lives and am so happy to find someone who noticed this. The novel is definitely set in 2016, not only because the dates line up but because Ethan goes to see la la land with a friend! So when he signed 2014 at the end I was totally floored. It makes no sense! The editors needed a little longer on this one methinks.
Hi Faith! I am loving the attention to detail in all these comments. I am a very fast reader, which is good as a book reviewer but means that these small things sometimes go right past me. BUT once someone points it out I am going to investigate!
And you are right; the number of errors in this one seems pretty high. 🙁
WHY was he referred to as Aaron Berlin in the beginning of the book and then they started calling him Aaron Levin? Unless I have some weird copy, it really threw me.
Hi Robin – wow that is a good catch. Yes, my copy says Berlin for most of the book, on pages 11 and 13. Again on 125 and 143. By page 200 (after Jessica is shot) he’s using his new assumed name, Levin. Maybe the character’s name was changed at some point and no one caught it? But he’s called both names. That’s so weird!
How did the editor not catch that? I just had Berlin ingrained in my mind from the beginning because they kept talking about Germans regarding Arthur Kruse. Then when I got to Levin, I’m like who is Aaron Levin? But honestly, any editor should have caught that!
I agree – I’d feel like double-checking character names would be on the editing list. lol if I had noticed that I’d have been suspicious that he was a new version of Jonathan/Jack, out to get Jessica. But I think just an editing error.
Did anyone notice/comment on the major typo/wrong name when Alison was talking to Jonathan/Jack about the creepy vibes she feels in the Bermuda house? The book cited the name Caroline instead of Alison!
lol I didn’t even know you could put an image in comments! I am going to add it to the post and credit you!
Did you see Robin’s comment about Levin and Berlin?
Yes, I did. Double checked that Alison was in the conversation. The Caroline name was crazy – editor didn’t catch?
Allison Horn’s dad was involved in Faye’s drowning.
Hank I am sorry, your comment ended up in spam 🙁
Thanks so much. I completely missed that!!! How weird that they’d been dating for a year and then he was like, oh, time to kill her!
I think Allison was a child of one of the Pirate Society members, and that’s why she was on the list and why Jonathan/Jay killed her. That she worked at the restaurant, similar to his Jonathan/Jay’s later daughter Grace, was just another poignant fact about her and why he was drawn to her. Right?
I have been a big fan of Peter Swanson’s earlier mysteries. This one, by far, was the worst. I’m disappointed. If I’d read Nine Lives first, I would not have picked up his other books. (For anyone who has not read his previous books, I highly recommend them! They’re much more nuanced, interesting, and better written.)
Susan!!! How did I completely miss this?
Yes, she was on the list, because her father Daniel was part of the group of kids. I think I was thrown by the fact that they were already involved with each other for a YEAR (page 88) before he starts picking off the list.
I think I was skimming because I also misunderstood Psycho Jay vs Fake Jay.
I couldn’t get through this book because the reader sucked and it was boring so I very much appreciate the spoilers!
Very happy to help. Audiobook narrators are so important!