1st to Die

“What is the worst thing anyone has ever done? Phillip Campbell asked himself again, heart pounding in his chest.”

The person wearing the mask of Phillip Campbell ponders this question before each murder; the act of killing a bride and groom soon after their nuptials appears to be the answer to this question. It is revealed later that this is the first line of Nicholas Jenks’s first novel, Always a Bridesmaid.

“There comes a point in everybody’s life when you realize the stakes have suddenly changed. The carefree ride of your life slams into a stone wall; all those years of merely bouncing along, life taking you where you want to go, abruptly end. In my job, I see this moment forced on people all the time. Welcome to mine.”

Told that she has aplastic anemia, Lindsay immediately recognizes that this diagnosis is going to change everything. However, the illness’s full effects on Lindsay are yet to be revealed.

“A nice-looking type dressed in a chambray shirt and striped tie, with short, dark hair and strong shoulders. He had a handsome, intelligent face that seemed to come to life as I walked in, but it only meant one thing to me: Polished brass. Someone from the department’s press corps, or City Hall.”

With one look at Captain Chris Raleigh, Lindsay guesses correctly that he from the mayor’s office where his role is public relations, a fact that biases her against him. However, there is also a hint that she finds him attractive, giving readers the first suggestion of a possible romance.

“The jacket wasn’t the groom’s. It belonged to the man who had killed him.”

One of the first pieces of evidence Lindsay and her team discovers is the tuxedo jacket the killer left behind at the Brandt crime scene. This jacket will prove to be pivotal in the case against Nicholas Jenks especially when the matching pants turn up in Nicholas’s closet.

“They had been married just a few hours before. They had just completed their vows. But they weren’t wearing gold bands. Wedding rings. The killer doesn’t take the earrings, I realized. He takes the rings.”

Lindsay was so emotional at the crime scene that she didn’t notice a vital clue: The killer took the Brandts’ wedding rings. This detail is crucial—the murderer’s trophy hunting connects all the cases to one another, identifying the motive as a twisted statement about marriage. Moreover, the rings will play a pivotal role in Chessy’s confession—she will force Nicholas to swallow the rings as a symbol of his betrayal of his marital vows.

“Only then did the killer recognize that the warm flood burning his thighs and his knees was his own urine. He emptied the gun into Becky and Michael DeGeorge.”

This involuntarily released urine demonstrates the killer’s divided state of mind: simultaneously thrilled at the power over life and death and horrified by the act of killing. The urine will also identify the killer as a woman—here, the misleading masculine pronouns point to Chessy’s taking on a different persona, that of Phillip Campbell, when she executes her victims.

“I don’t know why I did it. It was risky and rash, precisely the opposite of whatever had gotten me as far as I was. Maybe I just wanted to say screw it in the face of authority. To Roth, Mercer. To play things my own way. Maybe the case was widening, and I just wanted to keep the illusion that it was in my control. Or maybe all I wanted to do was let someone else in.”

These are the thoughts going through Lindsay’s head when she decides to ride home with Cindy rather than pushing the nosy reporter away. Impressed with the woman’s resolve, Lindsay introduces Cindy to Claire. The trio’s instant bond forms the foundation of the Women’s Murder Club. Lindsay’s thoughts here indicate that her illness has changed her way of thinking, encouraged her to surround herself with friends to share her struggles.

“The Women’s Murder Club was born.”

The Women’s Murder Club is the heart of this series of novels by James Patterson. This moment in the first novel of the series marks the creation of this group, which uses close friendship to build a trusted and reliable crime solving team.

“Sensational headlines announced the handiwork of a sadistic, deranged, completely new kind of killer. Out-of-town news crews buzzed around the Hall. Tragic wedding pictures and wrenching family scenes were the lead on every TV newscast.”

News stories about the Brandt and DeGeorge killings have an impact on the investigation, for instance by influencing the cooperation of witnesses. The police emphasize the importance of controlling information—a directive that threatens the relationship between Cindy and Lindsay. Often, Lindsay prevents Cindy from publishing information she has shared with the Women’s Murder Club. Although these scoops would boost Cindy career, Cindy’s respect of these limits shows her respect for the investigation and for Lindsay in particular.

“The killer’s facial hair had turned up in Becky DeGeorge’s vagina.”

Claire’s autopsies on Michael and Becky DeGeorge lead to the discovery of a beard hair that gives Lindsay a rough idea of what the killer looks like and will eventually connect Nicholas Jenks to the murder.

“‘I like you better in white, Kathy,’ was all the killer said.”

The killer addresses Kathy Voskuhl in a way that suggests the two know each other—a change from the other murders. When the novel’s first suspect turns out to be Nicholas Jenks, Kathy’s abusive ex-boyfriend, this exchange will make retrospective sense. At the end of the novel, although it remains unclear which murders were done by Nicholas and which by Chessy, these words point to Nicholas committing this particular crime.

“The first two murders had been committed by someone stalking the victims from afar. That’s why he found them in the way he did. Tracked them. But this one, Kathy, she had been chosen in a different way. I was certain that whoever had done this had known her.”

Lindsay has established that the killer found the Brandts and the DeGeorges through their connection to the bridal department at Saks. Kathy, however, bought her dress somewhere else. The Voskuhls do not fit the pattern that has been established, which leads Lindsay to believe Kathy knew the killer—most likely in San Francisco. This deduction leads Lindsay to Nicholas Jenks.

“‘But there were some things…I said he didn’t treat her well. He was into intense sex games. Props, scenarios. Maybe even a little filming. Problem was, Kathy liked the games.’

There was a long pause before Merrill went on. ‘Well…I think he pushed her, forced her, to do more than she was comfortable with. I remember marks on her face, bruises on her legs. Mostly it was her spirit that was broken.’”

A friend of Kathy’s explains the BDSM relationship that kept pulling Kathy back to San Francisco despite its eventual descent into non-consensual abuse. This description echoes Nicholas’s similar abuse of his wife Chessy. The mention of props and scenarios is especially important—Nicholas will later claim that he masterminded the murders to exert complete control over his wife.

“I was staring at the killer of the brides and grooms. I was sure of it. It was the cut of Nicholas Jenks’s face, sharp as a stone’s edge, that told me. The gray eyes, cold and sterile, controlling. And one more thing. The red beard, flecked with gray.”

Lindsay has been trying to imagine the killers face ever since learning of the red beard hair found on Becky DeGeorge. When she learns the name of Kathy Voskuhl’s lover, she rushes out to find a copy of Nicholas Jenks’s books. When she studies his author photo, she believes she has found the culprit.

“‘His wife. First wife.’ Raleigh leaned in closer. ‘I pulled up the report. First-on-the-scene described her as pretty beat-up. Bruises up and down her arms. Large bruise on her face.’

A thought flashed in my head—Merrill Shortley, on Kathy’s boyfriend: He was into intense sex games.”

Lindsay connects witness statements with verifiable facts. Nicholas Jenks’s first wife, Joanna Wade, confirms that Nicholas was violent with women and describes his first novel Always a Bridesmaid, which leads to his arrest.

“‘So,’ Chessy Jenks smiled and said, ‘has my husband finally gone homicidal?’ She went up to Jenks, clasped his arm in a teasing way. ‘I always told him, with those creepy-crawler characters he writes about, it was inevitable.’

Could she know, I wondered. She lived with him, slept with him. How could she not be aware of what was going on inside his head?”

Chessy’s playful deflection is disarming at first, but it takes on new meaning at the end of the novel when we learn that Chessy is the killer. Lindsay is horrified by Chessy’s relaxed joking here, since she is convinced that Nicholas has been murdering couples around the country. Her intuition is correct: Nicholas put Chessy up to the murders.

“Here’s the idea for a book he always wanted to write. It’s about a novelist who is obsessed—the kind of thing Stephen King does so well. In order to write a better book, a great book, he actually murders people to see what it’s like. Welcome to the horrible mind of Nicholas Jenks.”

Nicholas Jenks’s first literary agent has this theory about his former client, underscoring the idea that Nicholas is capable of murder and has actually thought of doing it for the creative rush.

“The narrator was reflecting on his crimes from jail. His name was Phillip Campbell.

‘What is the worst thing,’ the novel began, ‘anyone has ever done?’”

The killer has been taking on the persona of Phillip Campbell; as Lindsay discovers while reading Always a Bridesmaid, Phillip Campbell is the name of the main character. The question the killer asked during the Brandt and DeGeorge murders is actually the first line of that novel. Whoever did the murders must be closely associated with, or at least obsessed with, this book.

“I hadn’t told him about Negli’s. I didn’t know how to. Just as we had felt such life, how could I tell him I might be dying. That my body, which a moment ago was so alive with passion, was infected. In a single day, it seemed that everything in my life was transformed. I wanted to soar. I deserved it. I deserved to be happy.”

As Lindsay finally allows herself to become involved with Chris, she worries that she is being unfair to him by not telling him about her illness. This tempers her blissful feelings and makes her feel guilty for keeping him in the dark. 

“I was no expert, but there was no doubt in my mind. The hairs were a perfect match.”

Lindsay has circumstantial evidence that points to Nicholas Jenks: his part ownership of the winery where the DeGeorges were found, the tuxedo pants, and scenes from his novel Always a Bridesmaid. The match between Nicholas’s beard and the hair found in Becky DeGeorge is not circumstantial—with this evidence, Nicholas is as good as convicted.

“She couldn’t restrain the thought that it was fitting and funny that in the end he had been trapped by his own twisted mind. It was more than funny. It was absolutely brilliant. Who’s laughing now, Nick?”

As Chessy Jenks, removes her Nicholas Jenks disguise and her Phillip Campbell persona, she imagines Nicholas angry and cold in a jail cell. Instead of committing another murder to exonerate him, Chessy decides to leave Nicholas in custody and eventually in prison as revenge for his abuse. He assumed Chessy would remain under his control, but here, she takes back her power, finally free.

“‘It was a setup,’ Jacobi said. ‘This Phillip Campbell guy, he gets off. He pins the whole thing on someone else.’”

A conversation with her former partner, Warren Jacobi, causes Lindsay to rethink her conviction that Nicholas Jenks is the killer. Warren read Always a Bridesmaid and knows that its main character was actually framed. Now Lindsay wonders if someone familiar with the novel used it to set Nicholas up.

“‘I don’t know what it proves,’ she answered, patting my back, ‘but the person standing over that poor boy at the murder scene was a woman. And I’m just as sure that she stabbed David Brandt to death with her right hand.’”

Claire finds evidence that the person who killed the Brandts was a woman, confirming Lindsay’s doubts about Nicholas Jenks’s arrest.