Tell Me What You Did by Carter Wilson

 

For all the people that said they predicted the twist, good for you I guess. I wrote down my theories for this book as I read it. I made 5 theories for 5 separate issues, which means any one of them can be true - nothing really would disqualify each other. And I got exactly 0 out of 5 things correct. So maybe I'm just super easy to fool, but clearly, I didn't see the ending coming. 

The premise of the story is a popular podcast called Tell Me What You Did. Poe Webb, the host of the podcast, is a 30 year old woman living in Burlington with her dog Bailey. The podcast is a true-crime podcast where Poe interviews a willing participant about a crime they committed. The person can remain anonymous, but in the past, their confessions have lead to arrests due to the huge amount of listeners she has that were able to decipher the confessor's identity through their voice etc. She secretly wishes her mother's killer would come on her podcast, but she knows that's not possible because she has killed him already.

One day, a man calling himself Ian Hindley calls into the show. I immediately recognized the name as a portmanteau of Ian Brady and Myra Hindley. Ha! What does that say about me... Hindley comes on the podcast seemingly normal (in a normal creepy kind of way since we expect these people to be criminals!) but soon, Hindley starts claiming that he's the one that killed Poe's mother. Poe's boyfriend and producer of the podcast, Kip Nguyen, does not know about Poe's mother being killed. This puts a strain on their relationship because Poe doesn't seem to be ready to talk about it. Poe starts relying on her father, who's unnamed throughout the whole novel, and a friend Poe has befriended named Alice Hill. Alice keeps telling Poe not to trust anyone, because Alice is a twice survived attempted murder victim. Poe keeps telling her at this point she only trusts her father. (So here's some of my theories, 1. I believed Poe killed the wrong guy. 2. I believed her father isn't to be trusted. 3. I believed one of Alice's attacker, Jack, is possibly Poe's father. 4. Hindley is hired by Poe's father. 5. Hindley is lying about having a hostage. The hostage part comes later. You will see that none of these turned out to be correct.)

We find out what happened to Poe's mother. When Poe was 13, she found out her mother was cheating on her father with different men. She learned this by getting on the family computer and looking into her mother's email. She knew her mother was going to meet a man the next day. Poe decides to come home early to catch her in the act, thinking the embarrassment would make her not want to cheat again. Instead, Poe walked into Leopold Hutchins stabbing her to death. (She knew his name from the her mom's email exchanges with him.) She never fully told her father that she witnessed her death, but she secretly started searching for Leopold Hutchins. Eventually, she found a man named Leonard Avery that she believed to be Leopold Hutchins. She lured him through a dating profile by using a picture of her mother's. Even though he didn't look like Leopold to her from her memory, she believes it's the same person, and killed him by poison on their second date.

Hindley is able to provide details that only the killer would know. Now Poe wonders if she killed the wrong man. She's quite shaken because she's also worried that she is going to be caught for the killing and have to serve time. She's somewhat at Hindley's mercy at this point, because Hindley already told her he knows about what she did in New York (killing Leonard Avery). He makes her confess to the killing on her podcast. She has no choice but to do so because Hindley kidnapped Kip and told her he would kill him if she doesn't follow through. 

By watching the live stream, Poe realizes where Hindley is at. She recognizes it because it's a nearby vacant house that she has been to not too long ago, when the family still lived there. She grabs a hatchet and runs over there. Hindley tells Poe he is John Worbly, Leonard Avery's brother. Leonard Avery is indeed the true Leopold Hutchins, whose real name is Leonardo Worbly. He was a serial killer, who only stopped killing because Poe killed him. Hindley/John was very close to his brother and took the fall for his brother for a murder and served 20 years in prison. When he found out Leonard was murdered, he became a model prisoner and got an early release to seek revenge. 

Hindley demands Kip and Poe to kill each other, and he threatens to kill the family of whoever is unwilling to kill the other. Kip and Poe both refuse to hurt one another. Poe's father barges in with a baseball bat and beats Hindley. Before killing him, Poe asks her father to stop because she wants to deliver the final blow. She shoots Hindley with Hindley's gun.

Poe serves a 14 month sentence for killing Leonard Avery, due to a good plea deal. Her killing of Hindley is ruled as self defense. She continues to run her podcast through prison. Her and Kip are still together. When she gets released, she plans on joining Alice's victims' advocacy group.