The Last Word

“For a week or two prior, his board had contained a friendly invitation (Want to play hangman), which sounds like something Jigsaw might say if you’ve never heard of the popular whiteboard game Hangman.”

This passage introduces the character of Deek and immediately associates him with villains in the horror genre. By referencing Jigsaw, the iconic murderer in the highly successful Saw franchise of horror movies, Adams implies that despite Deek’s outwardly friendly overtures, he is deeply invested in playing games far more sinister than the faintly macabre games of Hangman that punctuate his first interactions with Emma. Thus, even this introduction is a clue to his true identity as the mastermind behind Howard’s attack on Emma.

“She’s aware of her senses, but she can’t really feel them.”

This passage highlights the numbness and dissociation that Emma experiences in the wake of her daughter’s death, and as the novel progresses, it becomes clear that Emma’s entire sojourn in the Pacific Northwest is an attempt to avoid her feelings, just as she ignores her senses. As Emma struggles to work through her grief, her desire to avoid her feelings causes her to become numb and desensitized.

“It’s already done and she has drowned, her lungs and throat and sinuses full of chilled seawater. But somehow, like Immortal Shawn, she’s not dead.”

Along with using Visions and Hauntings as Tools for Processing Grief, the narrative makes use of Emma’s recurring dreams to indicate the dire nature of her ongoing mental health crisis. Additionally, the details of her nightmare reflect not only her current suicidal ideations but also foreshadow the nature of the novel’s climactic moment. The phrase “she’s not dead” indicates that she will ultimately escape from drowning and return to Shawn at the end of the novel.

“And this house can play tricks on you.”

This warning message from Jules casts the house itself as a character in the novel, and this effect is further heightened as Emma becomes hyper-aware of the house’s noises at night and comes to the realization that someone has been invading her space. The text from Jules also implies that the house is in some way haunted, whether by literal ghosts or the whispers of unpleasant memories. As the narrative will eventually reveal, however, the one truly haunting the house is Kane, who remains determined to punish Emma for her negative online review.

“Just. Like. Real. Life.”

The ominous and emphatic tone of this phrase is repeated several times in the narrative, reflecting Adams’s strategic use of repetition to imbue certain scenes with a deeply suspenseful vibe. Additionally, the phrase highlights Adams’s penchant for Using Metafiction to Critique the Writing Craft. Ironically, although Emma insists that Murder Mountain is unrealistic, Kane doggedly attempts to turn fiction into reality, setting Emma up in a manner similar to the tactics of the killer in his novel.

“He’s toying with her as he did them, salting his kill with fear.”

In this passage, Adams employs an implicit metaphor, comparing violence with food preparation to indicate the perpetrator’s belief that murderous actions should be prepared and savored just like a fine meal. Furthermore, the passage also provides a concrete example of Kane enacting scenes from his book, for he treats Emma just as he treated his fictional characters.

“In a story, the author is God.”

This grand and dramatic quote is taken from Murder Beach, but it also indicates the dangerously entitled approach that the antagonists hold toward reality as well. Deek, the true author of the book-within-a-book, quotes a line from Kane’s online writing group, and this detail becomes a red herring that is designed to create the false impression that Kane/Howard, not Deek, is the writer of the Murder Beach excerpts.

“Maybe her recurring nightmare of drowning is actually real life, and everything else has only been the fever dream of death, the last oxygen-starved synapses in her brain exploding like Deek’s fireworks.”

In this passage, Adams uses a simile to compare neurons to fireworks, and the colorful imagery nonetheless creates a sense of desperation as her confused brain conflates nightmares with reality. However, the recurring imagery of drowning also maintains a sharp focus on the isolated seaside setting and foreshadows Deek’s eventual attempt to kill Emma in a way that mimics her plans to die by suicide.

“A human body is dismantled by whispers.”

This quote is taken from the scene in which Kane kills Jake with his sword. By comparing the deadly sword strokes to whispers, Adams draws an implicit connection between swords and words, for just as Kane uses words to kill characters in his books, he uses his sword to kill and dismember in real life. The passage also provides an oblique and ironic rebuttal to the adage that “the pen is mightier than the sword.”

“His novels are controlled scenarios, small stages immaculately managed for slasher and victim to dance their dance. When he describes tonight’s events in Murder Beach, he’ll probably lie and pretend he was pleased to kill more than he intended.”

In this passage, Adams compares the act of writing novels to the performing arts. The narrative frequently implies that Kane likes the illusion of control that being an author provides, and he is likewise upset when his real-life plan goes awry. However, this passage is also intended as a misdirection, for the narrative implies that Kane is the author of Murder Beach, not Deek.

“Still the worst fucking writer I’ve ever read. He’d always been a gifted writer.”

Here, Adams uses the Rashomon effect to convey the same information from different perspectives. The first sentence represents Deek’s whiteboard message about Kane’s writing and is differentiated from the second sentence by a shift in font style. The second sentence appears in Murder Beach, and because it indicates a precise reversal of the first sentence, Adams makes it clear that the narrator of the book-within-a-book, Deek himself, is inherently unreliable.

“She thinks about Prelaw. And Psych. Whatever their real names must have been.”

Here, Emma considers the fates of Kane’s fictional characters, believing that they were real people. However, the fact that Adams never includes their names is a clue that both characters are only fictional. By contrast, when Emma truly gets to know the police officer, Eric Grayson, she stops dubbing him “Old Cop” and begins to appreciate him as an individual person rather than as a stock character in her own personal drama-filled narrative.

“Howard himself is no serial killer. Even if he wishes to be, even if he writes himself as one. He’s something worse. A wannabe.” 

This passage is part of Adams’s characterization of Howard. The description is designed to imply that Howard is the author of Murder Beach. Howard portrays himself as a godlike figure in Murder Mountain, and Deek does his best to cast Howard in the role of a dangerously unstable antagonist in Murder Beach. However, in real life, Howard is an amateur at both writing and killing.

“It’s like she got the last laugh.”

In this quote, Adams indirectly references the title of the novel, The Last Word. Howard makes this statement about Laura, whom he accidentally killed. Because Howard perceives Laura to have had the last laugh in his past, this moment also foreshadows the fact that Emma will have “the last word” in Howard’s life in the near future.

“If this had been a shitty H.G. Kane novel, the engine would sputter and die, and the enraged killer would storm to the driver’s window and jam his revolver to her temple and blow her brains out because the author is God—The engine starts. A satisfying, visceral roar. This is real life.”

The high-octane pace and violent wording of this passage demonstrate Adams’s ability to slip into markedly different narrative voices to create the impression that the novel itself is cobbled together from a patchwork of disparate perspectives. The phrase “the author is God” also emphasizes the dangerously megalomaniacal mindset of the antagonists, who attempt to impose their will on Emma’s world for their own perverse gain.

“Howard had been one-starred for far less ‘unbelievable’ twists in his own books.”

In addition to emphasizing Howard’s abysmal attempts at writing, this passage also highlights the novel’s recurring symbolism of stars. In this context, the one-star review takes on an overtly negative meaning, and this version contrasts sharply with Emma’s ongoing appreciation for the full canopy of the night sky, which offers a much more expansive view of stars that transcends the narrow-minded realm of book reviews and deals instead with the greater wonders of the universe.

“In fiction, if a character boils water for use as a weapon, something has to become of it. Maybe he’d find a way to embellish it. He was the narrator, after all.”

Here, Adams focuses on Using Metafiction to Critique the Writing Craft. Within Murder Beach, Deek (the narrator) discusses a literary device called Chekhov’s gun, whereby the author shows a weapon in the background and later uses it as a crucial plot device. Deek’s musings indicate a common trope of writing even as he struggles to make the chaos of real life fit his expectations of how a story should flow.

“Emma swings the entire goddamn pan directly into Howard’s face.”

This passage indicates the continuation of the Chekhov’s gun concept invoked in the previous quote. Although the water has cooled to the point that it would be ineffectual as a weapon, Emma still manages to wield the pan itself. Unlike the previous quote, which is a reflection of Deek’s private thoughts, this action takes place in Emma’s reality and describes an action rather than a metacommentary on a literary device.

“I’m actually happy. She was deeply unhappy.”

This passage marks a contrast between Emma’s perspective and the perspective of the narrator of Murder Beach. The font changes between these quotes, and Adams uses italics to indicate that the first sentence is a direct thought of Emma’s, rather than the limited third-person narrator writing about her internal state. The second sentence is one of many lies that Deek tells, and the passage therefore hints that he plans to kill Emma and stage her death as suicide.

“I take no pleasure in writing this final chapter.”

This quote from the end of Murder Beach deliberately conflates fiction with reality. It is only after Howard is dead that Deek uses the first person (“I”) in Murder Beach. As the narrator, Deek creates the fiction of Emma dying by suicide, and in real life, he then attempts to murder her and stage her death to support the details that he has already written.

“You wanted to die, Emma. It’s why you’re here.”

At the beginning of the novel, Emma is struggling with suicidal ideation due to the trauma of losing her daughter. As this passage indicates, Deek callously observes Emma’s mental health crisis and uses it for his own gain—to create scenarios that he can write about and subsequently profit from. His exploitation of her condition cements his position as the true antagonist of the novel.

“Maybe she’s only her own ghost and she’s already too late.”

This quote once again invokes the imagery of Visions and Hauntings as Tools for Processing Grief, and at this stage, Emma is briefly caught in the last vestiges of her inner anguish. As she struggles to speak to Shawn on the phone, she worries that she has become a “ghost” after dropping off the grid. Having renounced all aspects of her typical daily life, she has become a ghost of her former self, and Adams’s diction reflects this fact as the description of hauntings now applies to Emma rather than Shawn.

“Fuckin’ writers, man. She’d taken a long drag. Maybe they’re all nuts.”

Here, Adams uses italics to offset dialogue in a flashback. Emma recalls talking to Eric, the police officer, about Deek, and the passage provides a cynical commentary on the events of the novel by invoking the stereotype that the writing craft is often associated with people who have mental health crises.