51 pages • 1 hour read
Holly JacksonAs Good As Dead
Fiction | Novel | YA | Published in 2021A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
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BetaPart 2, Chapters 36-41Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Part 2, Chapters 36-39 Summary
Nat stands at the open front door and tells Max she will testify if he brings a lawsuit against Pip. While they are talking, Pip sneaks inside and drugs Max’s ever-present water bottle with Rohypnol. When Max dismisses Nat’s threat, she punches him in the eye. This distraction buys Pip enough time to hide in a closet and wait until Max drinks his water. Pip frets as she waits for the drug to take effect: “Almost nine already. Pip thought they could buy at least three hours with Jason’s body. [...] She was supposed to start establishing her alibi in forty-five minutes” (304).
When Max finally passes out, Pip takes his phone. She also finds a hoodie and a pair of shoes that she intends to mark with evidence from the crime scene. After she leaves the house, she gives her friends Max’s phone, sealed in a plastic bag. She instructs them to leave the phone near the entrance to the Green Scene complex but not to touch it.
Pip’s final destination is the home of sisters Cara and Naomi. These are the daughters of Elliott Ward, the murderer from her first podcast season. He pinned Andie Bell’s death on Ravi’s older brother Sal and then killed him to deflect blame from himself. Pip appeals to Cara and Naomi to help her establish an alibi, but she can’t tell them why. They immediately agree to do whatever she wants.
From the Ward house, Pip then calls Max’s lawyer to give him the good news that she will settle out of court. Pip knows that the lawyer will immediately try to reach Max, but no one will answer the phone. It’s now 10 o’clock, and Pip and her friends arrive at a McDonald’s, where they are all seen on video cameras. Pip pays for their food with a credit card that will timestamp the purchase. The trio then spends some time socializing, taking selfies, and making short videos of themselves before leaving the restaurant at 11:30.
Part 2, Chapters 40-41 Summary
When Pip arrives back home, her mother admonishes her about staying out late. Pip then trots upstairs and pretends to turn in for the night. She checks the bucket of bleach, which is still removing all the bloodstains and DNA evidence from her clothing. After picking up additional supplies, Pip sneaks back out of the house to find Ravi, who is parked a few blocks away in Max’s Audi. It’s now past midnight, and Pip and Ravi must still plant evidence and clean up the mess at Green Scene. They spend hours cleaning every surface that Pip touched and turn the heat on in Jason’s car to thaw him out.
They also retrieve Max’s phone, still in a baggie. Pip notes that he has received calls from his lawyer and each of his parents: “Those calls to Max’s phone had routed through the local cell phone tower here. Which meant they placed Max, and his phone, right here at a crime scene, where the police would find a dead man” (340).
Pip leaves the puddle of blood on the floor and wipes down the handle of the hammer. By this time, it is 2:30 in the morning. Pip puts on Max’s hoodie and shoes and drags Jason’s tarp-wrapped body out of the car and into the woods. She has also bagged a clump of Max’s hair that she pulled out while he was unconscious. She plants these strands on Jason’s body for the police to find.
Chapters 36-41 Analysis
This sequence describes how Pip and Ravi set the scene to misdirect the police. Everyone involved in Pip’s prior cases is enlisted to help. Even though Pip can’t tell them the whole story, they obey her instructions without question. Again, the emphasis is on Justice Denied, but Pip has learned from her past mistakes. Rather than expecting the apparatus of justice to do the right thing, she feeds the authorities’ expectations by giving them an acceptable narrative: “Jason was from Fairview, so his murder would probably be dealt with by the Fairview Police Department. A new game with new players: her against Detective Hawkins, and Max Hastings was her offering” (326). Pip’s animosity toward Max also relates to the theme of justice denied. He has routinely escaped any consequences for his previous crimes:
He was a taker, through and through. Born wrong, bred wrong, it didn’t matter which [...] This was also revenge. This town wasn’t big enough for the both of them. This world wasn’t. One of them had to go, and Pip was going to give one hell of a fight (307).
While Pip sees Jason as Pure Evil and deserving of his fate, she reserves a lesser punishment for Max. He isn’t quite as despicable as the DT Killer because he stopped short of murdering his victims, but he is a serial rapist and deserves life in prison as a fitting punishment.
In this segment, we see Pip using all the true crime knowledge she has accumulated during the three seasons of her podcast. She knows that Jason’s body must be cooled to throw off the time of death. She needs witnesses to establish credible alibis for her and Ravi. She also uses a call to Max’s lawyer to place Max at the scene of the crime. She soaks all the clothing she wore that evening in bleach to remove all traces of DNA. In performing all these actions, she effectively erases herself from the list of suspects in a murder investigation.
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