logo

67 pages 2 hours read

Caroline Kepnes

Hidden Bodies

Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2016

A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.

Chapters 11-15Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Chapter 11 Summary

At the bookstore, Joe learns that Calvin was wrong. The woman who came in did not have a copy of the novel, Portnoy’s Complaint, but rather a screenplay of the film adaptation. After they argue about the difference, Calvin gives him an iPad to watch a video from a celebrity named Henderson. Henderson has a web show called F@#K Narcissism. On the video, Henderson is describing a woman who sounds like Amy. She likes blueberries and has a lot of pubic hair, two things Joe always fixated on. Henderson refers to her as “Amy baby” (73). Calvin says Henderson lives in the hills and has Friday night parties. Joe gets the password to the party from Delilah and agrees to meet her later.

Chapter 12 Summary

At a hardware store, Joe buys rope, duct tape, gloves, and zip ties, before riding to the party with Calvin and two of his friends. They make it inside with the password. Joe surveys the house and it annoys him that Amy lives in such finery. Henderson appears and says his girlfriend won’t be there because she is visiting her mother. Then Henderson takes a microphone and asks to work on a comedic bit for the room. It is about how glad he is that his girlfriend is gone and how he can talk about his sexual exploits since she isn’t there. He describes their sex life. He asks her if she’s faking it. She explains that her ex was bad at sex, and she never loved him. Joe leaves and goes into Henderson’s bedroom. There is a box under his bed filled with things about Henderson’s ex-wife, Margie. He obviously can’t be happy without her.

Joe crushes four Percocets and puts them in the water bottle by Henderson’s bed. He thinks Henderson should learn that he can’t make fun of people he has never met.

Chapter 13 Summary

Joe hides in the closet behind Henderson’s suits as the party slows down. Once Henderson is asleep, Joe cuffs his ankles and wakes him up. He gives Joe the iPad password. Joe asks for the name of the maid, and them texts her that she has the day off. When Joe asks about Amy, Henderson asks if he is from the TV network. He says he met Amy at Soho House. Finally, he admits that she’s not his girlfriend and he made it all up. She never wrote back to him after he hit on her. She hated his show and said she wouldn’t go home with him. She also said the best sex she ever had involved blueberries. Joe is glad for the validation but thinks again that he was too good for Amy.

He finds a listing for Amy Blueberries in Henderson’s phone, but the number is not in service. He makes Henderson drink the drugged water and ties a plastic bag around his head. After Henderson is dead, Joe arranges the room to look like a sex party and tweets an empty bubble from Henderson’s account. People immediately start retweeting it, praising it, and interpreting the cryptic message. When Joe is nearly home, a cop gets out of a car and points a gun at him.

Chapter 14 Summary

The cop, Officer Robin Fincher, demands Joe’s driver’s license. When Joe says he’s a writer, Fincher’s demeanor changes because he is an aspiring actor. He gives Joe a jaywalking ticket and keeps Joe’s headphones. At home, Delilah comes in in tears. Joe forgot that he ditched her for the party. She cries and shows him a headline on her phone: HENDERSON HOUSE OF HORRORS.

Joe takes her upstairs to her room, and they have sex. She says her mom is visiting in a week and wants to meet Joe. As they continue to have sex, she refuses to climax until he agrees to meet her mother. Later, alone in his room, he watches TV coverage of Henderson’s death. A pizza deliveryman brings him an order and is already wearing a RIP HENDERSON shirt.

Chapter 15 Summary

Joe goes to an indie audition at the Soho Club. He leaves the bar and tries the doors in a hallway. A beautiful woman is in one room, auditioning someone. He realizes that she is the beautiful woman he saw at La Poubelle. On a notepad, he writes that he’s looking for someone. She responds in another note: Her name is Love. They flirt and he believes they are both perverts.

Chapters 11-15 Analysis

Henderson’s murder is the set piece of these five chapters. Readers of the first book will be familiar with Joe’s capacity for murder, but those new to the series will experience Henderson’s death as the real introduction to Joe’s indifference to human life. The author uses a clever bit of irony in naming Henderson’s show F@#K Narcissism, given that Henderson’s insecure narcissism is evident every time he appears on the page. Like Joe—and many other people in LA—Henderson is living an artificial life. He is famous, wealthy, desired, and yet, he is still hung up on his ex-wife, despite all of his bravado. He represents another facet of the character, Forty, who will be introduced soon. Henderson is miserable and successful, like Forty, but is not as self-sabotaging (at least in obvious ways).

Henderson’s comedic about his (alleged) sexual past with Amy is what makes Joe decide to kill him. When Henderson admits that Amy rejected him and that he made it up, his excuse is typical of Joe’s view of LA types: “I make shit up. I turn it around. Nobody wants to hear me go on about how my lady’s ex is, like, the shit in bed. It’s called a fucking comedy routine, son. It’s called comics make shit up” (94).

Henderson’s career—and his wealth—are built on artifice. Joe is relieved to hear that Amy didn’t mock him for his sexual abilities, but he still thinks that killing Henderson is a gift for humanity: “This man is no good for this world. He brings out the worst in women and his fifteen minutes have gone on too long” (97).

Joe describes the actual murder in an affectless manner, with far less passion and descriptiveness than the petty irritations in Joe’s life. The deadpan, disinterested tone of the murder’s details is similar to that used by the narrative of the killer Patrick Bateman in the novel American Psycho. The brutal taking of a life appears to inspire less feeling in Joe than getting caught jaywalking.

Delilah’s desire to introduce Joe to her mother is poignant: she is probably aware, at some level, that Joe is not truly interested in her. Her hope to secure an emotional bond with Joe is especially ironic, given that the reader has just truly seen how emotionless Joe is. However, she hopes that this time will be different, and that they have a bond that would justify him meeting her mother.

Joe’s monologue about wanting to hold something alive in order to feel together with someone or something is a clue into his view on relationships: “This is why people have small dogs, why they trap them in their efficient apartments, because sometimes you need another living thing, you need eyes on you, even if the eyes belong to a fucking Pomeranian” (107). Whenever Joe is alone, there is nothing to satisfy his appetites, no one to reassure him about his insecurities, and nothing to make him feel as if he belongs in the world. Joe ironically embodies the same empty vapid need for recognition he despises in all the Hollywood hopefuls.

blurred text
blurred text
blurred text
blurred text

Related Titles

By Caroline Kepnes