Kill for Me, Kill for You

Patricia Highsmith’s 1950 novel Strangers on a Train and Alfred Hitchcock’s 1951 movie by the same name both represent significant influences for Steve Cavanagh’s Kill for Me, Kill for You. Highsmith’s novel follows two men, Guy Haines and Charles Bruno, who meet briefly on a train. When Guy complains about his unfaithful wife, Miriam, Bruno offers to murder her in exchange for Guy killing Bruno’s father. Bruno insists that, because each man is unknown to his victim, police will be unable to connect them to the crimes, thus ensuring a clean escape—the perfect murders. Although Guy rejects Bruno’s offer, Bruno kills Miriam while Guy is out of the country. Terrified that Bruno will report him to police if he doesn’t hold up his end of their deal, Guy reluctantly kills Bruno’s father, and is consumed with guilt. As Bruno continues to insert himself into Guy’s life, police begin to suspect a connection between the men. Their relationship takes a sinister turn as the men develop a mutual obsession that leads to Guy to try to save Bruno’s life even as Bruno threatens to turn him in to the police. Guy’s inability to save Bruno from drowning makes him feel consumed by guilt and drives him to confess to the murder of Miriam and Bruno’s father. The novel ends with Guy’s arrest.

Although well received after its publication, Strangers on a Train became a cultural phenomenon with the release of Alfred Hitchcock’s 1951 movie of the same name starring Farley Granger and Robert Walker. Hitchcock made several changes in his adaptation of Highsmith’s novel. In the film, Guy awkwardly accepts Bruno’s offer to the murder swap, rather than dismissing it outright like his novel counterpart. After Miriam’s murder, Guy cannot bring himself to kill Bruno’s father and attempts to warn him about Bruno’s plan instead. Finally, Guy does not intervene in Bruno’s death and is eliminated as a suspect in Miriam’s death when a witness recognizes Bruno as her murderer. These changes serve to portray Guy as a Hollywood hero innocent of wrongdoing, rather than the complicated, psychologically tormented antihero of Highsmith’s novel.

Cavanagh’s characters reference both the novel and the movie throughout Kill for Me, Kill for You, adding an element of metafiction to the thriller. Cavanagh implies that, in 2007, Ruth reads Highsmith’s novel while recovering from the trauma of her home invasion and was inspired by the idea of a murder swap. Ruth references Hitchcock’s movie directly while attempting to manipulate Amanda and other grieving loss into killing for her. These references both acknowledge the inspiration for Cavanagh’s story and suggest psychological manipulation as central to Ruth’s plan from the beginning. Like Hitchcock’s film protagonist, Amanda initially agrees to the murder-swap plan, but finds herself unable to kill her target when the moment comes. Although Amanda does ultimately kill Quinn in self-defense when he fights back, her hesitation aligns her with Hitchcock’s hero rather than Highsmith’s antihero. The addition of the character of Billy also allows Amanda to maintain a degree of innocence by positioning him as the story’s clear villain.