John Kiriamiti’s My Life with a Criminal: Milly’s Story is not your typical crime novel. It does not revel in high-speed chases, glamorous heists or daring escapes. Instead, it takes us into the intimate trenches of a relationship where love and deception wrestle endlessly, and where one woman must measure the true weight of her heart against the dark pull of her partner’s life of crime.
Told through the eyes of Milly Nyambui, known to readers by the name she never chose for herself, it is a story that is as raw as it is riveting, as tender as it is tragic.
From the first chapter, Milly’s voice seizes you. She speaks not as a victim looking for pity nor as an accomplice seeking forgiveness, but as a woman demanding to be heard. Her opening line sets the tone with a startling confession of identity:
“Call me Milly, because he made you believe I liked the name. He never once told you that I had begged him hundreds of times not to make the name stick.”
In that moment, the reader is thrust into the core of her struggle — the chasm between who she is and who she is made to appear, a fracture widened by her relationship with Jack Zollo, the man at the heart of her story. Jack, both a lover and a liar, becomes the catalyst for her unraveling and her awakening.
What Kiriamiti achieves here is remarkable. He reframes the notorious saga of Jack not from the bravado of his own criminal exploits (as in My Life in Crime), but through the bruised yet unflinching eyes of the woman who loved him. This shift in perspective transforms the narrative into something deeply human: an emotional autopsy of love poisoned by secrets.
Jack Zollo is magnetic. His charisma, generosity and apparent tenderness mask a darker reality that Milly senses but struggles to name. Their relationship begins with warmth and promises, but slowly, shadows creep in.
The lies grow heavier, the disappearances more frequent, and Milly’s intuition sharper. Yet, love clouds her vision. Her inner voice is a battlefield. Does she protect her heart or protect the man she cannot stop loving?
The tragedy lies in how Jack’s choices seep into Milly’s soul. In one searing moment, she reflects:
“He made me feel like a criminal. I guess he was a confirmed one himself, with more nicknames than he ever let you know.”
This is not just an observation about Jack’s duplicity, it is a lament of how his life stains hers, how proximity to his deceit reshapes her own identity. It is not simply Jack’s crimes that wound her, but the invisible cage they build around her self-worth, her dreams, even her name.
Supporting characters amplify her struggle. Her family’s concerns echo the suspicions she tries to silence. Her children become silent witnesses to love’s decay. They remind us that crime never entangles just the criminal, it spreads like smoke, suffocating everyone nearby.
Stylistically, the novel has a raw, stripped-down power. Kiriamiti does not romanticise crime, he lets Milly’s vulnerability do the heavy lifting. The language is direct but drenched in emotional intensity.
However, at times, the narrative lingers on Milly’s inner turmoil, circling back to doubts and realisations already voiced, which can slow the pace. Yet, that very repetition mirrors real life: the way we replay betrayals in our minds, searching for the moment everything shifted.
What makes this story so unforgettable is its refusal to be simple. It is not just a tale of a criminal and his lover. It is a study of the thin, dangerous line between devotion and destruction. How much can love excuse? How much can trust endure? At what point does staying become its own kind of crime?
By the end, you do not walk away with easy answers. Instead, you carry Milly’s ache, her reluctant clarity, her quiet strength. She emerges not as a passive bystander in Jack’s life of crime, but as a fully realised woman forced to confront the brutal truth: Sometimes, love is not enough to redeem or protect.
If Jack’s original memoir seduced readers with the thrill of danger, Milly’s Story sobers us with the cost. It is the echo after the gunshot, the silence after the getaway car disappears. It is what happens when the dust settles and the heart is left to count the casualties.
The book is devastating, unflinching and profoundly human. One that forces you to sit with uncomfortable questions about loyalty, betrayal, and the price of loving someone who belongs to the shadows. A must-read for anyone drawn to stories where love and morality collide, and where the most dangerous battles are not fought in the streets but in the human heart.
