A razor-edged satire of wealth and entitlement, How to Kill Your Family follows the prison-written memoir of the brilliant, merciless, and mordantly funny Grace Bernard as she dismantles the Artemis dynasty. Around her orbit the oblivious rich, the well-meaning liberal, and the opportunist, each exposing another seam in the social fabric Grace slashes open. The result is a darkly comic web of revenge, betrayal, and inheritance where blood ties bind—and choke.
Main Characters
Grace Bernard
Grace Bernard is the novel’s narrator, architect of a meticulous revenge campaign, and a murderer who insists on her own moral clarity. From a Limehouse prison cell, she recounts how she executed six “accidental” deaths across the Artemis family to avenge her mother while skewering class and taste with caustic wit, only to be jailed for the one death she didn’t cause; her memoir begins in the Prologue. Her worldview takes shape against the cruelty of her father, Simon Artemis, and the loss of her mother, Marie, while her longing for ordinary intimacy flickers—then collapses—through her relationship with Jimmy Latimer. In a final turn of the screw, Harry Hawthorne, the half-brother she never knew, outmaneuvers her, finishing the job she began and making her the hostage of her own confession.
Simon Artemis
Simon Artemis is the billionaire patriarch Grace targets as the emblem of moneyed callousness: new-money swagger, old habits of denial, and a pathological devotion to image. He rejects Marie and ignores Grace, then presides over a family defined by appearance—his wife Janine and daughter Bryony—while remaining blind to the rot Grace methodically exposes (his public gloss is first sketched in Chapter 1-5 Summary). Simon’s casual cruelty reverberates through every decision Grace makes and fuels her belief that murder can be a kind of moral arithmetic. Before she can reach him, however, he is killed in a boating “accident” engineered by another of his discarded children, Harry, proving Simon’s empire was always most vulnerable from within.
Supporting Characters
Marie Bernard
Marie Bernard is Grace’s late mother and the emotional engine of the plot, remembered through letters and fragments (see Chapter 1-5 Summary). A once-glamorous model who is abandoned by Simon and refused basic compassion even as she dies, she becomes the moral touchstone for Grace’s campaign of Revenge and Vengeance. Her love steadies Grace; her betrayal by the rich defines Grace’s fury.
Harry Hawthorne
Harry Hawthorne is Grace’s secret half-brother and the story’s late-arriving victor, revealed via a coolly confessional letter in the endgame (Chapter 16-18 Summary). He shadows Grace’s killings, lets her clear the field, then kills Simon himself—not for love or justice but to control the fortune, later consolidating power with Lara Artemis. Harry’s clinical amorality mirrors Grace’s discipline while exposing how easily revenge can be repurposed into profit.
Jimmy Latimer
Jimmy Latimer is Grace’s childhood best friend and occasional lover, representing the comforting normalcy she both yearns for and rejects. Kind but pliable, he is pushed into complicity with polite society once his fiancée, Caro Morton, dies; he ultimately testifies against Grace, a betrayal that formalizes her isolation (their courtship and wedge are traced in Chapter 6-10 Summary). Jimmy’s failure to choose Grace over respectability is the book’s quietest but deepest wound.
Kelly McIntosh
Kelly McIntosh is Grace’s chatterbox cellmate whose vulgar charm masks sharp opportunism. A self-styled prison gossip, she secretly photographs Grace’s manuscript for Harry, turning nuisance into leverage (her first appearance sits in the Prologue). Kelly’s small-time hustle becomes a decisive power play, proving that cunning isn’t limited to the elite.
Caro Morton
Caro Morton is Jimmy’s polished, insecure fiancée, a social climber whose jealousy of Grace curdles into open hostility. During a confrontation at her engagement party, Caro falls from a balcony—an accident that sends Grace to prison for a murder she didn’t commit (Chapter 6-10 Summary). As a foil to Grace, she personifies the “legitimate” world that excludes outsiders while hiding its own brittleness.
Jeremy and Kathleen Artemis
Jeremy and Kathleen Artemis are Simon’s parents and Grace’s first victims, embodiments of genteel cruelty who encouraged Simon to abandon Marie and her child. In Marbella, Grace runs their car off a cliff, inaugurating her campaign with an act that feels to her like rough justice rather than murder (see Chapter 1-5 Summary). Their deaths set the template: research, poise, and plausible accident.
Andrew Artemis
Andrew Artemis is Grace’s idealistic cousin, a gentle environmentalist who rejects family excess. Despite a flicker of remorse, Grace drowns him at the nature reserve where he volunteers, an execution that stings because he’s the rare Artemis who might have been decent (Chapter 1-5 Summary).
Lee Artemis
Lee Artemis is Simon’s rakish brother whose appetites make him easy prey. Grace stages his death as a sex-club misadventure, turning his vices into alibi and method alike (Chapter 6-10 Summary). Lee’s oblivious bravado encapsulates the family’s belief that money insulates them from consequence.
Janine Artemis
Janine Artemis is Simon’s image-obsessed wife, living apart in Monaco and curating her life like a brand. Grace hacks her smart home and traps her in a sauna, weaponizing luxury against its owner (Chapter 11-15 Summary). Janine’s death is Grace’s most technological—and most pointed—satire of status.
Bryony Artemis
Bryony Artemis is Simon and Janine’s influencer daughter, a vapid social-media princess whose brand is self. Grace mails her a face cream laced with peach extract, triggering a fatal allergy and turning Bryony’s devotion to appearance into a cause of death (Chapter 11-15 Summary).
Minor Characters
Lara Artemis
Lee’s sharp, long-suffering wife; spared by Grace, she later stabilizes the clan’s assets and strategically aligns with Harry to run the Artemis Foundation.
The Latimer Family
John and Sophie Latimer, a GP and a therapist, give Grace a home yet embody the comfortable hypocrisies she resents; their anxious daughter, Annabelle, rounds out the household’s well-meaning respectability.
Helene
Marie’s steadfast friend from her modeling days who briefly becomes Grace’s guardian and supplies crucial history about the Artemis grandparents’ cruelty.
Amir
A brash new-money traveler whose flashy car, loaned without suspicion, becomes Grace’s instrument for her first double killing.
Character Relationships & Dynamics
Grace and Simon define the book’s central axis: her surgical rage is forged by his desertion and indifference, and every “accident” she engineers is a rebuttal to his belief that wealth erases responsibility. Marie’s memory gives Grace purpose and a private code, while Simon’s curated family—Janine and Bryony—offer soft targets whose luxuries become lethal. Though Grace intends to end with Simon, Harry’s intervention proves that the Artemis rot is hereditary and that power, in this world, belongs to whoever seizes it first.
Grace’s bond with Jimmy Latimer threads intimacy through the carnage: he is the one person who sees her softness, yet he ultimately chooses respectability over loyalty when Caro dies. Caro’s rivalry with Grace exposes the class anxieties Jimmy refuses to confront, and his testimony crystallizes Grace’s loneliness; love becomes just another institution that will not hold for her.
Inside prison, Kelly McIntosh flips the script on Grace’s snobbery. What begins as comic irritation hardens into a surveillance state in miniature, with Kelly selling Grace’s secrets to Harry. Their dynamic mirrors the larger novel: underestimation becomes a weapon, and the people Grace thinks least of end up tilting the board.
Across the wider Artemis clan, victims sort into types—brazen hedonists like Lee, ornamental elites like Janine and Bryony, and old-guard enablers like Jeremy and Kathleen—while outliers like Andrew complicate Grace’s otherwise ruthless calculus. On the power side, Lara emerges as the canny survivor who partners with Harry, while the Latimers represent a gentler but ultimately fragile alternative to family. Even offstage figures like Harry’s mother, Lottie Hawthorne, signal how the Artemis orbit attracts and discards, leaving children to settle the accounts.