As Good As Dead

Fiction | Novel | YA | Published in 2021

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Summary

Background

Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Part 1, Chapters 1-7

Part 1, Chapters 8-14

Part 1, Chapters 15-21

Part 1, Chapters 22-29

Part 2, Chapters 30-35

Part 2, Chapters 36-41

Part 2, Chapters 42-47

Part 2, Chapters 48-55

Character Analysis

Themes

Symbols & Motifs

Important Quotes

Essay Topics

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Discussion Questions

Themes

Justice Denied

In all three books of the series, Pip often finds herself involved with the representatives of law and order whose job is ensuring justice is served. More than any of its predecessors, the series finale shows the degree to which the system fails to do its job. As a result, one of the novel’s principal themes is justice denied. Pip repeatedly encounters authority figures whose main focus seems to be the obstruction of justice. This pattern emerges early in the book when Pip is sued for libel by serial rapist Max Hastings. His attorney demands that she publish a statement recanting Max’s recorded confession. As might be expected, this stance infuriates Pip, as her following interchange with Max’s lawyer demonstrates:

‘I urge you to turn back before you lose everything.’ ‘Thank you for your unbiased advice, Mr. Epps,’ she said. ‘But it appears you have underestimated me. I would be willing to lose everything, destroy myself, if it also meant destroying your client. That seems a fair trade’ (15).

Pip’s fury is apparent in these words, but her rage is understandable given the systemic incompetence she has already faced in the two preceding books in the series. Book two ends with Max’s acquittal and the devastation this creates for his rape victims. This culmination shatters Pip’s remaining faith in the justice system.

In a later confrontation, she is equally disenchanted with the police department and Detective Hawkins. He tries to adopt the stance of a rational adult in the face of Pip’s emotional claims that someone is stalking her. While not overtly dismissive, Hawkins is threatened by Pip’s amateur sleuthing and the influence her podcast has. Instead of taking down her witness statement about the stalker, he tries to gaslight her out of trusting the evidence of her senses. Once again, Pip finds authority figures to be less than helpful:

‘Are you getting help? Talking to someone?’ ‘I’m talking to you right now,’ Pip said, her voice rising. ‘I was asking you for help. My mistake, I should have known better. It wasn’t so long ago that we were standing in a room just like this and I asked you for help, to find Jamie Reynolds. You said no then too, and look where we all are now’ (78).

It might be argued that the unhelpful advice of Hawkins leads directly to Jason Bell’s murder. Pip already has ample proof that nobody in authority will believe her. She is tired of seeing justice denied and will exact vigilante justice because all other avenues have been closed to her.

The Struggle to Be Heard

A large measure of Pip’s rage in the novel can be attributed to the people who make a concerted effort to suppress her speech. This tactic leads to an examination of the theme of the struggle to be heard. The first novel in the series represents Pip’s crusade to give a voice to the voiceless. She is keenly aware that authority figures are respected and their words have weight, while a teenage girl has none. Pip’s podcast allows her to take her case to the people, but it meets with resistance from those who wish her to remain silent. During her conversation with Hawkins about her stalker, he seems to imply this:

‘This is the kind of thing that happens when you make yourself a public figure.’ ‘Make myself a public figure?’ Pip stood a step back to keep the fire away from Hawkins. ‘I didn’t make myself a public figure, Hawkins, that happened because I had to do your job for you’ (77).

Hawkins interprets Pip’s podcast as a childish desire for personal attention rather than the frustration of a young woman who has no credibility in the halls of importance. This attempt to suppress Pip’s observations isn’t limited to law enforcement. Her own parents engage in this tactic. When Pip tries to tell her mother about the dead pigeons in the driveway, her concerns are trivialized:

‘There’s a dead pigeon in exactly the same place as the one last week. Like someone put it there on purpose.’ It sounded ridiculous even as she said it. ‘Oh, don’t be silly.’ Her mom waved her off. ‘It’s just one of the neighbors’ cats’ (52).

The greatest irony of the novel is that Jason Bell suffers from the same problem as Pip does. Both feel that their words aren’t heard. One of the reasons Jason wraps his female victims in duct tape is to suppress their speech. He tells Pip, “Too loud, all of you. Speaking out of turn. That’s not how it’s supposed to be. You’re supposed to listen to me. That’s all. Listen and do what you’re told. How is that so hard?” (224).

While it might be easy to classify Jason among the figures trying to suppress Pip, he also sees himself as a victim of suppression by women, which triggers his rage at the whole gender: “You were a test, just for me, and I knew I couldn’t fail it. My last one. Far too loud to let it be. Seen, not heard; didn’t your daddy ever teach you that?” (224). Jason and Pip both share the same feeling of fury at being unheard. However, Pip gets the last word in the end with the aid of a hammer.

Pure Evil

All three books in the series examine the question of good and evil—right and wrong. Book three is especially focused on the question of what constitutes real evil. The theme of pure evil allows Pip to contrast the behavior of the other criminals she’s encountered with the Duct Tape Killer. The death of Stanley Forbes still haunts her, but “on one hand, she could tell you, from the very bottom of her heart, that she didn’t believe Stanley Forbes had deserved to die” (28). At the same time, Pip acknowledges that he lured his father’s future victims to their deaths, placing Stanley in an ambiguous gray category between good and evil.

Charlie Green is similarly confusing. In some sense, Pip admires the man who killed Stanley. She believes he was trying to get justice for his murdered sister just as she would if her little brother were murdered. Pip says of Charlie, “That’s why she needed him to be found, not caught. He’d helped her once before, opened her eyes about right and wrong and who decided what those words meant” (29). Strangely enough, Charlie acted as a mentor in the second book when Pip struggled with the notion of justice. In retrospect, she even holds some sympathy for Andie Bell’s killer: “Elliot Ward would sit in prison for the rest of his life, but was he an evil man? A monster? Pip didn’t think so” (38). These acknowledgments do little to help Pip understand the difference between good and evil. However, her struggle ends when she realizes that her stalker is the DT Killer:

There was no gray area here, none at all, not even a trace. The DT Killer was the closest thing to evil the world could offer her. There was no good in him at all: no mistakes, no good intentions twisted, no redemption, nothing like that (151).

Labeling the DT Killer as pure evil allows Pip to believe that the murder she commits is justified. Although Ravi points out that Pip acted in self-defense, she insists that she made a conscious decision to go back and bludgeon Jason. It should be noted she takes this drastic action because the system of law and order has failed her at every turn. If the system is broken, where can one go to receive justice? As Charlie once told her, institutions don’t get to decide the difference between right and wrong. People do. In finding the embodiment of pure evil, Pip can finally vent her fury at every person and institution that has failed her.