How did The Other Passenger end? | Louise Candlish | Spoilers and ending explained
Louise Candlish is the queen of “neighborhood noir”–particularly when it comes to the lengths people will go to within a community over desirable real estate. It’s at the center of her stories, but the stories are about the people themselves and the neighborhood they are in. In The Other Passenger, a property causes a thousand tiny fractures between neighbors that has big consequences. Another must-read psychological thriller from Louise Candlish!
Who are the characters?
Jamie is the narrator and he is married to Clare. Jamie and Clare are around the age of 50, and have been married for years. While Clare is successful and has family money, she never holds that over Jamie’s head. But it does frustrate her a bit that Jamie just doesn’t care about working. In fact, he actively evades her offers to help him find a new career path or fund retraining, and privately he holds all of this over her head. Clare is the owner of their house, which bothers Jamie though Clare is kind-hearted and happy to share what is hers with her husband.
Melia is a new junior colleague of Clare’s at her firm and she is married to Kit. Melia and Kit are younger than Jamie and Clare, around the age of 30. Melia is stunningly beautiful, while Kit is a gregarious sort. Both are wannabe actors forced into other professions. At first the two couples become fast friends, despite their obvious gap in age and wealth. As the book picks up, the barbs from Kit towards Jamie about being a tenant in their own home begin to fester.
What is The Other Passenger about?
Jamie seems to have a great life. He is married to Clare, who has family wealth and has bought them a beautiful home. Their marriage is a happy one. Sure, they are now 50 and don’t have the excitement of people in their 20s. But overall things are good. Jamie suffers from claustrophobia which makes train commuting difficult. But in a brilliant move, he and a group of friends who call themselves the “river rats” take the water taxi to work.
Things take a turn when his friend Kit goes missing around Christmas. Kit is the husband to Clare’s coworker Melia, and the couple is young, attractive, and fun. What started as a great friendship between the two couples has spiraled. Melia reports Kit missing and when Jamie departs the river taxi, he is stopped by two police officers. They have heard that the night Kit went missing, Kit and Jamie were in a heated argument on the river taxi. Who is the other passenger that reported it? Surely Jamie won’t go down for a crime he didn’t commit… right?
How did Kit disappear?
Several months prior to Kit’s disappearance, Melia tells Jamie she’s attracted to him and the two begin an affair. They meet at the houses Melia is to be showing at the end of the day when Jamie tells Clare he is meeting with a career counselor. Jamie falls head over heels in love with Melia, and she seems to be into him as well.
The night that Kit goes missing, Jamie and Kit get into an argument on the river boat when he accuses Kit of having an affair with their friend Gretchen, and Kit accuses Jamie of being attracted to Melia. Kit goes missing and another passenger on the boat informed police about the argument; they also learn about the affair. Two detectives interview Jamie about the night of the disappearance.
When Jamie tells Clare about the police questioning him and that he isn’t allowed to talk to Melia, Clare puts the pieces together and realizes they were having an affair. Clare and Jamie argue and he follows her when she walks over to Melia and Kit’s house to confront her. Melia tells them Kit still hasn’t reappeared and then tells Jamie to stay away and that she hates him. Clare doesn’t tell Melia she knows about the affair.
So… what really happened to Kit?
Meanwhile Clare has asked a friend for help looking deeper into who Kit really was. Based on the intel her friend brings about Kit, Clare tells Jamie that she suspects that Kit and Melia set him up to collect an insurance pay out. He would only have to be missing for a few years before she could file a reasonable death claim and inherit several million dollars. Jamie appears shook by this news. In a big twist, we see Jamie meet Melia afterward and discuss how Clare is falling into the trap they set. Jamie and Melia planned it together and they are moving forward with the next stage of their plan.
On New Years Eve, Kit and Melia secure alibis for themselves and arrange an encounter on a street that they already know doesn’t have CCTV. As planned, Kit and Melia arrive together and Jamie confronts them about Kit faking his disappearance (even though Jamie and Melia planned it). Kit asks Jamie not to tell anyone they saw him. Before they walk away, Melia stabs Kit and they throw his phone and the knife into the river. When the police find him, they’ll assume he was meeting his dealer and this was a drug deal gone wrong. Meanwhile Melia will collect the insurance money and Jamie and Melia can finally be together.
How does The Other Passenger end?
After the police discover Kit’s body, they interview Jamie about it. Jamie feels confident that he will be cleared because he had an alibi, but the police tell him that Kit was never missing and that the officers who Jamie met with before about Kit’s disappearance don’t exist. Jamie realizes that Melia wasn’t only deceiving Kit, she was deceiving him as well. Meanwhile Jamie’s alibi for the night of Kit’s murder quickly falls apart and a photograph of him with Kit is anonymously sent to the police. Melia’s alibi stands.
Jamie is convicted of Kit’s murder and sent to prison for 15 years. In prison, Jamie realizes that the fake officers were friends of Melia’s from a play she was in years earlier. He sends his lawyer to look into it but the actor lies about his involvement. Melia comes to visit Jamie and he lashes out at her for setting him up. As she leaves, Jamie finds out she is taking the river taxi home and for a brief moment they connect over how much they both miss Kit and mourn his loss.
In the epilogue, it’s revealed that Kit’s insurance policy was void because he took too much leave to qualify. Kit died for nothing, it turns out. In the final scene, Melia meets a handsome man on the river taxi and charms him. The cycle begins again, we presume…
What did I think?
There were so many layers to the relationships between the four central characters and I found the plot to be expertly crafted. Despite superficial differences, Kit and Jamie were so similar that they always felt like a ticking time bomb waiting to go off. Kit was envious of Jamie for having fallen into a marriage that gives Jamie the lifestyle Kit wants. Jamie works in a coffee shop, but he lives in a huge and beautiful piece of real estate that most in London can only dream of. Clare is a supportive wife, she doesn’t cares how much money he makes.
Meanwhile Jamie covets Kit’s life—he is young, attractive, and married to the beguiling Melia. Melia is stunningly gorgeous and alluring. Jamie can’t not notice it. But Jamie is happy with Clare–or at least, he should be. Why would Jamie do anything to jeopardize the great life he has? Clare is by far the most inherently good character. At the same time, there are hints from Candlish that Clare is also able to choose to be that way because she has some privilege.
This book had me flipping flopping about what I thought was really going on so many times. Every time I thought I had it figured out, another twist turned it around. When Clare first suggests that Melia is playing Jamie (before Kit actually dies) I was shook and couldn’t wait to see how Jamie would react. But then we learn they planned it that way and my jaw was honestly on the floor. Jamie knowingly blew up his life planning to be with Melia and have the insurance money once they killed Kit. Jamie assumed he would be cleared. How this man thought that he deserved to have a young beautiful wife and wealth beyond belief flummoxed me.
It is easy to feel for both Jamie and Clare in different ways while reading this book, and to roll your eyes at Kit and Melia. In a way, Kit and Melia also have things that others covet. They are young, beautiful, charismatic, dynamic, and engaging. Everyone wants to be around them. And these qualities mean they have an advantage towards being successful if they want to. But similar to Jamie, Kit seems to be a saboteur of his own life. The two constantly seem one chapter away from blowing up their lives, or perhaps their friendship.
The twists and turns through the entire final 40% were delightful and gripping. I couldn’t stand Jamie and Melia, but I also sort of wanted to see if they could pull it off. When Jamie learns Melia set up both him and Kit to take one another out and leave her with the money, I was floored. Melia is the sort of villain that I enjoy reading, even though her behavior and motivations are horrible. She’s so devious and twisted!
I liked that Louise Candlish didn’t let Jamie off the hook in the end, because truly he was a horrible person. I actually thought that Jamie ended up being a more despicable character than Kit or Melia. Jamie had a good life (and he even acknowledges that), but he blew it up for things that were ultimately superficial, not to mention, false. It seemed that Melia got away with her plan until we realize the technicality that Kit didn’t actually meet the two year requirement for the insurance policy. All of that and no money! This was so satisfying. In the final scene, it’s clear Melia isn’t done. She will move onto the next target. After all, she hasn’t lost her beauty or her charms, just her husband and secret boyfriend.
This thriller delivered above and beyond. I honestly wish I read this with a book club because I was dying to discuss it!
