No One Can Know by Kate Alice Marshall
Seattle-area author Kate Alice Marshall’s latest thriller is a grisly, twisty summertime treat for readers who like to keep guessing and can handle a little gore. Like she does in “What Lies in the Woods,” her first novel for adults, Marshall centers three women. This time, they’re sisters, whose varying perspectives on what happened one fateful night when they were teenagers are the crux of the mystery.
When 16-year-old middle sister Emma Palmer returns to her opulent Arden Hills home at 4 a.m. one morning, she discovers the bodies of her parents with fresh bullet wounds in their head and chest. Older sister Juliette is wearing strange clothing and talking nonsensically, and 12-year-old Daphne has blood splattered on her pajamas. Instinctively, Emma snaps into action. She orders the girls to change into clean clothes. They coordinate their stories. When she’s convinced they’re ready, she dials 911.
Emma doesn’t ask her sisters any questions. “It isn’t that she’s afraid of the answers. She’s afraid she already knows them.”
Unwittingly, in covering for her sisters, Emma set herself up to take the blame for her parents’ deaths. It’s only through the legal wrangling of a family friend that Emma avoids prison — but in the court of local public opinion, she’s still guilty.
Now, over a decade later, Emma and her husband Nathan are unexpectedly back in Arden Hills in her childhood home. Long-buried fears resurface among the estranged sisters, who make their way back to one another. As strange occurrences start to mount, Emma realizes she should have been asking questions all along — and that her own life may be in jeopardy.
Marshall depicts a family that looks picture-perfect at first glance, but is rotten beneath the surface. Randolph Palmer, the patriarch, owns Palmer Transportation, a local trucking company. He’s seemingly successful and in control by day, but controlling and ruthless by night. There are whiffs of shady business deals and illicit affairs.
Irene Palmer, beautiful and polished, codependent and cruel, withholds Daphne’s asthma medication because she thinks her daughter is having a panic attack. She viciously tears up Emma’s artwork and brooks no dissent. The girls cope in various ways: Juliette appears obedient but sneaks out at night to act out with guys and drugs. Emma’s the rebel, yearning to leave home and attend art school far away. Daphne, the baby, observes it all, and does what she can to stay under the radar.
Arden Hills is populated by a host of characters with mixed motives. Police Chief Ellis and Officer Rick Hadley, friends of the deceased, never stop hounding Emma. Logan Ellis, the chief’s son, gave Juliette pills the night of the murders. Even Nathan, Emma’s husband, is acting suspicious, insisting on inspecting Randolph’s gun collection and searching the carriage house for hours on end. Emma’s sisters may be the most obvious suspects — but is anyone entirely innocent?
Marshall keeps the plot taut and the pages turning as Emma and her sisters piece together what really happened the night their parents died, and whether knowing the truth is important after all.
Christine Perkins is executive director of the Whatcom County Library System, wcls.org.
(Originally published in Cascadia Daily News, Friday, August 22, 2025.)