The Last Word

Deacon lives in the house next to the one that Emma is tending. He is mainly referred to as Deek throughout the novel. He is a retired writer and is eventually revealed to be the primary antagonist, although he initially pretends to be a friend and ally. His famous true crime novel is titled Silent Screams, and its success allowed Deek to buy the house next door to the house that Emma is watching for Jules. Initially, Emma considers him a “fascinating mystery” and an “incessant practical joker” (28). They both use their telescopes to play hangman on whiteboards and for much of the narrative, Emma feels protective toward the older man. Deek is described as frail, and Emma quickly discounts the idea that he might be involved in Howard’s attacks. The novel eventually reveals that Jules’s unstable son, Howard, once stalked Deek in the hopes that Deek would become his writing mentor, but Deek hated Howard and his writing.

Emma’s opinions about Deek slowly change as she learns more about him. When she discovers that Deek knows her attacker personally, she begins to suspect his motives, and this sudden doubt foreshadows Deek’s role as the mastermind behind Howard’s attack. The narrative eventually reveals that Howard killed someone after Deek criticized his high-school-era writing. Furthermore, Deek “studies serial killers for a living” and cajoles Emma, via whiteboard, into reading Murder Mountain (425), which inspires her to write a negative, one-star review on Amazon. This review convinces Howard to follow Deek’s command to kill Emma. In addition to manipulating a killer, Deek also attempts to fake Emma’s death by suicide after Howard’s murder attempt fails and she discovers Deek’s involvement.

Deek’s motivation for orchestrating Howard’s attack on Emma is to write a book called Murder Beach, which details the attack. He hopes that this book will revive his flagging career as a writer. Adams includes excerpts of the draft of Murder Beach, juxtaposing them alongside Emma’s perspective of events. Adams finally reveals the authorship of the book-within-a-book when he reveals that Deek is the mastermind, but for most of The Last Word, it is implied that the person writing Murder Beach and the person attacking Emma are one and the same.

Howard Grosvenor Kline’s real name is revealed near the end of Part 2. Prior to that, Adams refers to him only by his pen name, Kane. Under this name, Kane published Murder Mountain and 15 other low-quality eBooks with the word “murder” in the title. Before Emma gives Murder Mountain a negative online review and after she has begun housesitting his childhood home, Howard stalks her and develops a crush on her. He wears a fedora and is obsessed with swords. Howard considers himself to be a “sigma male. Just as powerful and charismatic as an alpha, but solitary” (296). Prior to stalking Emma, Howard stalked Deek, and when Deek made negative remarks about Howard’s writing, Howard abducted a fellow classmate named Laura and tied her up. She died trying to escape his bonds while Howard was at school. He keeps pieces of Laura, and “suck[s] on her teeth sometimes” (313).

After Emma leaves her online review and Deek orders Howard to kill her, Howard becomes the overt antagonist of the novel. His mother, Jules, says he is diagnosed with “schizoaffective disorder.” He has an advantage over Emma during the attack because he is more familiar with the house than she is. However, her superior intelligence wins out. While she is a voracious reader, Howard has a “near-total disinterest in reading” (356), which makes him a terrible writer and an easy target for Deek’s manipulations.

Over the course of the novel, Howard vacillates between being infatuated with Emma and hating her because of her review. His intentions are romantic, but Deek convinces Howard to become violent toward Emma. Howard is Deek’s foil, for he fails where Deek previously succeeded—in the publishing industry. For most of the novel, Adams implies that Murder Beach is written by Howard, but it is not. Howard is not the cold-hearted character that Deek creates in Murder Beach, the book-within-a-book. In reality, Howard accidentally kills his mother in the same way that he once caused Laura’s death. His character shifts dramatically after he intentionally kills the delivery driver, Jake, and as he succumbs to the throes of his emotional crisis, Emma kills him in self-defense.

Howard’s mother, Jules, hires Emma to be her house-sitter. Initially, they only talk via text messages and online communications. Jules is “short, stocky, with a silver Karen haircut and a fitted Burberry jacket that must have cost more than Emma’s car” (280). Emma also describes Jules as “bubbly, rapid-fire, unpredictable” (281). After Jules sees a masked person in the footage of the doorbell camera, she buys Emma a stun gun that comes in handy several times. However, when Emma tells Jules the name of her attacker, Emma doesn’t know that Howard is Jules’s son, for their different last names keep this fact a secret even after Emma learns Kane’s real name. Howard ties Jules up with the intention of freeing her later, but she dies from asphyxiation while trying to escape her bonds.