58 pages • 1 hour read
Elle CosimanoFinlay Donovan Knocks 'Em Dead
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2022A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Chapters 1-12Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 1 Summary
On Thanksgiving morning, Finlay “Finn” Donovan holds a funeral for Christopher, her children’s goldfish. Finn accidentally overfed the goldfish, and she is irritated that her ex-husband, Steven Donovan, will likely use this as evidence of her carelessness in their ongoing custody battle over four-year-old Delia and toddler Zach.
To her relief, Steven is unaware of her recent adventures. In the previous book (Finlay Donovan Is Killing It), a woman overheard a conversation between Finn and her literary agent about her romantic suspense novel. Believing that Finn was plotting an actual murder, the woman, Patricia Mickler, assumed that Finn was a contract killer and offered her money to kill her mob-affiliated husband, Harris. Her husband was killed—by someone else—while in Finn’s van, and Finn and her nanny, Veronica “Vero” Ruiz, buried the body. Patricia passed Finn’s name to a friend, Irina Borovkov. When Irina’s husband, also mob affiliated, was also killed—again, not by Finn—Irina and Patricia rewarded Finn. At the end of the first novel, they offered her cash and some information: Someone has taken out a hit on Steven in an online forum.
Chapter 2 Summary
Finn, Vero, and the children head for Finn’s parents’ house for Thanksgiving dinner. The children will stay with Finn’s parents for the weekend because Finn doesn’t want them staying with Steven until she can figure out who wants to kill him and stop the hit.
Following the discovery of five bodies at Steven’s farm at the end of the previous book, most of whom were killed by the Russian mob and buried with the cooperation of Theresa, Steven’s then-fiancée, Steven has called off his engagement to Theresa and moved into a place of his own. Now, he wants to host the children there. Vero teases Finn about inviting her new boyfriend, Julian, a law student, over to the house, but Finn knows that she will be too busy investigating the online forum and working on her new novel.
Finn worries about the fact that Vero isn’t going to see her family for Thanksgiving. Vero claims that her mother is taking care of her sick aunt and that her only other local family member, Ramón, does not know how to cook. At the Donovan home, Finn’s parents and her police-officer sister, Georgia, fuss over the children and greet Vero warmly. Vero is distracted and a little withdrawn, so Finn encourages her to see Ramón, and Vero leaves. Finn’s mother, Susan McDonnell, irritates Finn with unsolicited advice, suggesting that Steven is a selfish monster, that Julian is too young for her, and that Finn should turn her attention back to Nicholas Anthony, a detective who works with Georgia. Finn is still upset about an argument that she and Nick had and denies any romantic interest in him.
Chapter 3 Summary
After she gets home, Finn gets a text from Julian, who asks if he can stop by. When she tells him that her children are away for the weekend and asks if he wants to come inside, he tells her that he can’t. He and his friends have planned a spontaneous trip to Florida the next morning. Finn feels the difference in their ages and lifestyles acutely. They kiss again but are interrupted by Steven’s arrival. Julian leaves, and Steven makes several critical comments about Julian’s age. Finn notes how terrible Steven looks and guesses that his girlfriend, Bree, an employee of Steven’s that he cheated on Theresa with, broke up with him. He admits that it’s true and then demands to take Delia and Zach on Sunday, saying that he wants to get a Christmas tree with them. Unable to think of an excuse, Finn reluctantly agrees.
Chapter 4 Summary
On Saturday morning, Finn goes to the public library to use their internet and connect to the online forum where the contract on Steven is posted. The forum is disguised as a community where women can talk to one another about their concerns about motherhood and marriage, but Finn can see that many messages are coded discussions of illegal activity. In the subgroup where a woman called “FedUp” posted the message about Steven, she calls him a cheat and a liar and says that she “can think of 100 Good reasons the world would be better off without him” (30). Finn is relieved to see that no one has yet responded with an offer to take care of FedUp’s problem.
Chapter 5 Summary
On Sunday morning, Finn rouses Vero from bed with the promise of a shopping trip. They go to a home improvement store and buy Christmas gifts for Finn’s family and replacement tools for the ones that Steven took from the garage when he moved out. Finn is surprised by how cautious Vero is suddenly being about money.
Vero tells Finn that she has found new information while searching the online forum: Someone using the name “EasyClean” has been making a lot of money accepting contracts to kill people. She is concerned that EasyClean may be gathering information about Steven to decide whether to accept FedUp’s contract. As they discuss their concerns about the children’s upcoming tree-shopping trip with Steven, Vero puts a pair of binoculars in the cart, telling Finn that she has an idea.
Chapter 6 Summary
That evening, Vero and Finn stake out the Christmas tree farm, watching Steven and the children through the binoculars and listening to them through a baby monitor that Finn slipped into Delia’s backpack.
When Finn mentions getting a lawyer to help with the child custody situation, Vero looks uncomfortable. She confesses that she has withdrawn the money that Irina and Patricia gave them and invested it. Vero’s belief that they can simply replace it with the advance money from Finn’s next book increases the pressure that Finn feels to get the book done.
They notice the children run ahead of Steven and disappear into the dark maze of Christmas trees. It becomes clear from the sounds coming through the monitor that the children are lost and panicked. Finn and Vero jump out of their van and run into the line of trees. They find the children but do not see Steven. When they find him, he has been hit on the head, and his phone is gone. He angrily asks whether Finn was spying on him. Finn worries that EasyClean attacked him, looking to snag his phone to gather more information about him.
Chapter 7 Summary
On Monday morning, Finn’s agent, Sylvia, calls for an update on her new book. Desperate for something to tell her agent, Finn begins describing a plot loosely based on the events transpiring in her own life. Sylvia urges Finn to add in the “hot cop” from the first novel, but Finn resists. Sylvia thinks that the novel will be good enough to sell to a film or television production company. Vero suggests that if the novel does not work out, they can make some money by accepting the contract on Steven’s life.
After they end the call, Steven arrives. He tells Finn that he found his phone in his car, and she assumes that EasyClean left it there after mining it for information. He asks to take Delia and Zach out to breakfast, and when Finn refuses, he angrily accuses her of trying to keep the children from him. He insists that they spend the upcoming weekend with him or else he will call his lawyer.
Chapter 8 Summary
Looking for a change of scenery, Finn takes her laptop to the mall to write. Sylvia is demanding 20,000 words of the new book by Monday. Finn cannot concentrate, however, and opens the online forum. EasyClean has accepted the contract on Steven.
She calls Vero, who reminds Finn that if the police start looking into the forum, they will reopen the investigation of Harris’s death and Finn and Vero will be under suspicion. Impulsively, Finn reopens the forum and replies to FedUp, using coded language to offer to kill Steven for half as much money as EasyClean, hoping that it will delay the two making a plan.
When Vero realizes what Finn has done, she is shocked; she points out that Finn has now used her own laptop to not only access the forum but also post there. Finn panics, but Vero tells her to just go pick Delia up from school and that they will handle the situation as soon as they can.
Chapter 9 Summary
When Finn arrives at Delia’s preschool, she is dismayed to learn that her sister, who was supposed to be Delia’s Career Day guest, has been delayed and sent Nick Anthony in her place. During Nick’s presentation, the children are delighted, and many of the adult women in the room are thrilled as well, whispering and giggling to one another about the handsome detective. Nick’s new partner, Joey Balafonte, introduces himself to Finn, saying that Nick talks about her often. Nick finishes his talk, and he and Delia approach; Finn notices that Delia clearly worships Nick. When they have a moment alone, Nick asks Finn to go out to dinner with him; flustered by her physical reaction to his proximity, she agrees.
Chapter 10 Summary
After Nick leaves, Finn immediately regrets her impulsive decision and decides that when he calls her, she will back out of their date. She sees a stranger talking to Delia and hurries over. The woman is holding up a phone; on it, Theresa, Steven’s ex, is saying that she doesn’t “care about some stupid Career Day” (69). The woman introduces herself as Aimee Reynolds. As Theresa’s best friend, she says, she used to spend a lot of time with Delia and Zach, and she misses them desperately.
Finn sends Delia to use the restroom. Once she is alone with Aimee, Finn tells her that neither she nor Theresa has any reason to be near Zach and Delia anymore. Aimee asks Finn not to let her anger at Theresa keep Aimee from seeing the children. Theresa is and always will be Aimee’s best friend, Aimee says, regardless of what she has done to Finn, but that does not mean that Aimee approves of everything Theresa does. Finn agrees that if Aimee will keep it a secret from Theresa, she can come over on Saturday to see the children.
Chapter 11 Summary
Finn and Vero drop the children off at the mall’s childcare center and take Finn’s laptop to a tech center. They tell the young man working there about their concern about a forum post being traced back to Finn’s laptop or account. He says that he cannot answer their question with any authority and gives them a phone number, telling them to ask for someone named Cam. Cam helped him get some compromising photos back from a catfish, he tells them, so he can vouch for Cam’s expertise.
Chapter 12 Summary
That night, while Georgia watches the children, Finn and Vero go to Ramón’s auto repair garage to meet Cam. While they wait, Finn checks her phone, hoping for a message from Julian, but she doesn’t get one. When Cam arrives, they see that he is a teenager. After charging them an exorbitant amount of money, he asks for details about how Finn set up the account and then assures her that the odds of the post being traced are very small. She asks whether he can trace a forum user for them and scribbles down FedUp’s information. He charges them another $50 and says that he will be in touch.
Chapters 1-12 Analysis
These chapters set a comic tone for the novel, introduce key characters and the story’s central conflict, and lay the groundwork for the book’s overall themes. From its very first scene, the story’s tone supports its thematic arguments about The Irony and Absurdity of Life. The first chapter opens with Finn’s comments about the death of someone only identified at first as “Christopher.” Cosimano employs vivid descriptive language meant to conjure the image of a horrific human death, describing the corpse as “bobbing on the water’s surface, his eyes bulging and empty” (1). However, the punchline comes when Finn reveals that the deceased is her children’s pet goldfish. This ironic reveal not only creates humor but also characterizes Finn as someone who sees life’s absurdity clearly: Her tone is one of bemused disbelief as she describes actually dressing in mourning clothes and giving a eulogy for a fish that has only been a part of their household for a matter of weeks. Finn’s first-person perspective and voice continue to employ this ironic and bemused tone as more ridiculous situations develop, all of which point to the overall absurdity of the story’s central conflict: While juggling the responsibilities of an ordinary working mother, Finn must also take on unusual risks as she secretly works to save the life of a difficult ex-husband who refuses to believe that he is in any danger. This absurdity, established with the opening sentences of the novel, adds a light and comic tone to what is otherwise a grisly story.
Cosimano also establishes Finn’s character in these opening chapters; beyond her humor, Finn’s willingness to undertake these dangerous tasks in the service of loved ones is also a key element of her characterization. Steven is important to her children, so, regardless of his cheating, lying, and attempts to take the children, she is determined to prevent his murder because she cannot bear the idea of her children’s grief should he die. This demonstrates how deeply Finn loves her children and her innate moral sense that even the life of someone who has hurt her badly has value.
Vero is another important character in the novel; she acts as Finn’s sidekick, helping Finn carry out her plans and coming up with some of her own. One of Vero’s key functions in the story is giving voice to darkly funny ideas—like her suggestion that they end their money woes by accepting the contract on Steven and killing him themselves—that would damage this characterization of Finn as innately ethical. Another of Vero’s functions is to test Finn’s capacity for friendship and support the text’s thematic concern with Women’s Networks of Support. Vero’s support of Finn includes ordinary things like taking care of Delia and Zach and extraordinary things like helping Finn bury a body and investigate the shady online forum; Finn offers Vero unconditional support in return. As the novel continues, it becomes clear that Vero has problems of her own. Finn’s concerns about Vero spending so much time at home, Vero’s absence on Thanksgiving, and Vero’s concerns about spending money at the home improvement store all foreshadow her confession that she has emptied Finn’s bank account and “invested” the money. Finn’s reaction is not one of anger, however—her trust in Vero is absolute, and her decision that they will solve Vero’s problems together shows the importance of women’s networks of support.
This same theme is developed through other relationships among female characters as well. Finn’s mother, Susan, and her sister, Georgia, cook for Finn and her children, offer childcare, and offer well-meaning advice. Even minor and somewhat villainous characters like Theresa are integrated into such female networks, as shown in Aimee’s spirited defense of her friendship with Theresa in Chapter 10. Cosimano shows the importance of these relationships by prioritizing them in the narrative; by contrast, Finn’s relationships with men, and the novel’s secondary conflict of whether she will choose Nick or Julian, are given much less emphasis in the narrative’s action.
Finn’s life is full of competing demands, and her willingness to keep going instead of buckling to this pressure introduces the novel’s theme of The Necessity of Resilience and Determination. The comic and often ironic chaos of her situation sometimes threatens to overwhelm her. She is, in many ways, an ordinary mother, trying to get her daughter to preschool, create holiday memories for her children, and keep both children safe and happy. She is also an author who has been neglecting her work—the family’s sole source of income at present—and who faces increasing deadline pressure each time her agent calls. These two sources of pressure would be enough, but Finn is also unwillingly involved with the Russian mob and an investigation into who is trying to kill her ex-husband, and both her sister and Nick are police officers. As Finn navigates competing demands on her attention without slipping up and alerting either Georgia or Nick to her illicit investigations, the time pressure that she is under is ratcheted up again by Steven’s demand in Chapter 7 that he be allowed to take Zach and Delia for the upcoming weekend and by EasyClean’s acceptance of the contract on Steven’s life in Chapter 8. Without the willingness of Finn’s mother, sister, and best friend to help shoulder some of Finn’s burdens, Finn’s life would spin rapidly out of control. However, in addition to their support, Finn’s own characteristic resilience gives her the perseverance to juggle these escalating and competing demands, highlighting the necessity of resilience and determination for success.
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By Elle Cosimano
