Family Dynamics and More: A Review of “Haven’t Killed in Years” by Amy K. Green

Numerous authors and filmmakers have created stories around our curiosity about the families of criminals—what did they know, how did they survive, all those questions. Amy K. Green’s new novel Haven’t Killed in Years takes up the question through her protagonist, Marin Haggerty, who’s been living a low-key life under an assumed name so that no-one knows her father was a notorious serial killer.

This is definitely a mystery—Marin’s “safe” identity has been pierced in the most gruesome of ways, when someone begins sending her human body parts—and the reader is treated to a well-plotted whodunit in many ways. But what is more interesting are the layers of self that Marin gradually peels away, admitting to the reader (and, one feels, possibly to herself as well) that she may have been more involved in her father’s killing sprees than she’s comfortable admitting.

It’s a deep psychological dive as well as a thriller, and Green handles it deftly. Novel will be available in November 2025.