Keep It in the Family

Keep It in the Family (2022) is a psychological thriller written by British author John Marrs, whose other popular works include The One (2016) and What Lies Between Us (2020). The novel explores the story of first-time homeowners Finn and Mia Hunter, who are renovating their first home with the help of Finn’s parents, Dave and Debbie. During the renovation process, Mia discovers a cryptic message scratched into the floorboards: “I WILL SAVE THEM FROM THE ATTIC” (46). The discovery—along with Mia’s unexpected pregnancy—sparks an obsessive investigation into the house’s history. The intimate reflections of Finn, Mia, Dave, and Debbie are intricately intertwined with reports from local newspapers, interviews with village residents, and excerpts from true-crime books, each revealing the hidden depths of the Hunter family’s secrets. Additional chapters are narrated from the first-person perspective of an unnamed stalker who murders children and describes each murder in graphic detail.

Keep It in the Family is Marrs’s ninth novel, and in keeping with his overall body of work, it explores the darkest corners of the human psyche, the dangers of self-deception, and the deadly impact of lies within a family. Like many of Marrs’s novels, Keep It in the Family employs a first-person, multi-character style of narration that provides direct access to each character’s point of view.

This guide refers to the 2022 Thomas & Mercer e-book edition.

Content Warning: Both the source text and this guide discuss mental health conditions, violence, child neglect, child abuse, serial murder, kidnapping, and suicide.

Plot Summary

Keep It in the Family follows the story of the Hunter family: Dave, his wife Debbie, their son Finn, and his wife Mia. Finn and Mia have lived and worked in London for the past five years of their marriage, but they have become discouraged by the difficulty of buying a home in London. Hoping to climb the property ladder, Finn and Mia have moved to the small village of Stewkbury in Bedfordshire, where Finn grew up. Finn and Mia are currently living in Dave and Debbie’s guest house while they renovate their first home. During the renovations, Mia discovers an ominous message scratched on the floorboards in a childish scrawl: “I WILL SAVE THEM FROM THE ATTIC” (46). Unnerved, Mia pushes Finn to investigate, and they find multiple suitcases in the attic, each containing the dead body of a child. Mia is so distressed by the discovery that she falls from the attic, severely injuring herself. She later awakens in the hospital to discover that the doctors have performed a caesarean section to deliver her child, Sonny. In the aftermath of the gruesome discovery in the attic and her disastrous fall, Mia struggles with depression and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Believing that learning more about the children and the people who loved them will bring her a sense of closure and help her to move on, Mia embarks on her own investigation into the murders and neglects her son in the process. Her activities escalate tensions within the Hunter family.

As the primary plotline unfolds, the narrative is punctuated by periodic flashbacks from the perspective of an unnamed narrator who lived in Finn and Mia’s house decades ago and was forced to help their parents lure in child victims to be murdered in the attic. Bit by bit, the flashbacks reveal that the unnamed narrator has a brother named George; he is implied to be murdered by the parents, but he actually escapes and goes on to live a separate life in Norway. The unnamed narrator also attempts to help one of the victims, a girl named Precious, but when both children escape from the house together, Precious realizes that the narrator is not a fellow victim but a resident of the house. Fearing the narrator’s intentions, Precious runs into the road and is severely injured by a speeding car. Realizing that Precious is now a liability, the narrator attempts to kill her and then convinces the driver of the car to ally with them and flee from the scene of the accident. The narrator’s nascent fascination with killing escalates as time goes by.

As Mia delves deeper into the mystery, she uncovers several significant revelations that suggest that her father-in-law, Dave, was involved in the murders. When Dave realizes just how close Mia is coming to uncovering the family’s secrets, he holds Mia hostage and then dies by suicide. In the aftermath of his death, existing evidence suggests that Dave murdered the children in the attic. However, Dave’s suicide leaves behind a cloud of suspicion and unanswered questions. Amidst the chaos, Mia struggles with PTSD and seeks solace in therapy. Her resilience and determination to uncover the truth drive the narrative forward. Mia’s interactions with Mark, a former detective, shed light on discrepancies in Dave’s confession, casting doubt on his role as the killer. Finn and Mia find new evidence that implicates Debbie just as they realize that she has taken Sonny out for a walk. Realizing that Debbie has kidnapped Sonny, Mia and Finn locate her in a nearby cemetery without the child. They confront her about the murders, and Debbie confesses to murdering 40 children and hiding their bodies in the attic. She also admits to kidnapping Finn when he was a baby, murdering his sister. She also manipulated Dave into aiding her crimes over the years. (Dave was the driver of the car that accidentally hit Precious years ago.) The revelation sends shockwaves through the family, and as Mia desperately searches the cemetery for the missing Sonny, Finn violently attacks Debbie, who has no regrets over how she has lived her life.

Debbie is sentenced to lifelong incarceration at a mental health facility for particularly dangerous patients. From her confinement, she manipulates Finn into visiting her by hinting that Sonny is alive somewhere in the world. The narrative eventually reveals that she has convinced her long-lost brother, George, to abduct Sonny and raise him in Norway. Finn hires a private investigator to track Sonny down, and the boy is eventually returned to Finn and Mia. Finn then tells Debbie that he will never see her again; his conversations with her while she is incarcerated also reveal that she forced him to help her stalk and kill her victims when he was still a teenager.

In the novel’s final chapters, Finn and Mia attempt to rebuild their lives. One day, Finn takes Sonny out for a day of quality father-son time. They go together to a storage unit. Finn opens several suitcases containing the bodies of his adult victims and encourages his son to play with the remains. He reflects that his way of doing things is much better than his mother’s, and he prides himself on being a loving father.