Something He Did

As the editor of a newspaper, I deal in words. Hundreds of thousands of them, day in, day out. I was a kid who devoured books weekly but grew into an adult who struggled to read outside of work and would be lucky to get through one a year. That all changed in April 2026 when out of the blue, bang! I finished a book in a day. Since then, I’ve read 12, but never from first page to last in one day again… until Something He Did by SK Lynch.

Detective Sergeant Claudio Russo, head of the Melbourne Police Missing Persons Unit, is investigating the disappearance of a teenage girl. Amber, a recovering drug addict, is taking her ex to court for shared custody of their daughter while her mum battles cancer. Once an All Black and still a legend in Aotearoa, Jake is struggling to reclaim his fame across the ditch in Australia. His daughter Brooke is in the tumultuous throes of adolescence and hates everyone and everything.

Every character has demons to face, but it all comes to a head when a car accident irrevocably alters the course of each of their lives.

Lynch switches perspective chapter to chapter, crossing timelines to explore all the pasts that led to the present. While a chapter may be set on day 287 for one character, it may also flashback to their childhood, or to a formative event that shaped their future. All the while, there is You, the kidnapper, a monster whose identity is withheld. Lynch throws up possible candidates all the time by transplanting clues from the You chapters to the others. You hear that You’s father was abusive; you read about another character’s father yelling. You think you know; you don’t. The deeper theme at play here is that the cycle continues. What is done to you, you do unto others. What you suffer, so must everyone else.

No spoilers, but Something He Did has the plot twist of the 2020s, and hindsight is, as they say, 20-20. I. Could. Not. Put. It. Down. But I did nearly drop it in shock. Is there anything better than that kind of thrill?