Minotaur
Published on February 24, 2026
Reviewed by Meredith Frazier
How to Get Away With Murder by Rebecca Philipson is full of surprises, just as a murder mystery should be. And while you may suspect you know right from the beginning how things are going to go, Philipson masterfully twists every expectation.
Scotland Yard detective Sam Hansen has been on leave following a nervous breakdown, but the murder of a young girl impels her to go back to work to find the killer. That’s all straightforward enough, but there is a book within the book: the title work is a how-to guide written by Denver Brady, a serial killer who has never been caught. Philipson opens with an excerpt from Brady’s book, then alternates chapters of Brady’s book—which is found at the scene of the crime—with chapters following Hansen and the murder investigation. The two stories weave together with subtle—but unsettling—similarities. Soon, Hansen is not only looking for the child murderer but is also trying to find Brady by tracing his crimes.
Twist after twist undercuts expectations in the best of ways throughout the novel, and Philipson also adds just a touch of humor by occasionally making it clear that she’s an author writing a mystery, and this is all just characters in a story. That relief is needed because the novel itself deals with dark themes: child murder, serial killers, suicide, mental health, torture, and abuse of women. But while Philipson makes her points about the horrors, she says in an opening note that her main goal is to tell a good tale, and she delivers on that.
How to Get Away With Murder is very character driven, and Hansen is a complicated, well-drawn character in an absorbing story. Don’t expect a full-on police procedural, though, in spite of the Scotland Yard ties. Hansen is a detective and does have access to and works within the police systems, but she is working somewhat on the periphery of the murder case, and Philipson doesn’t go into deep detail about the gathering and analyzing of evidence. That aside, the premise, the structure, and the characters of How to Get Away With Murder all add up to a book that’s hard to put down and equally hard to forget.