THE HOUSE ON BUZZARDS BAY

Strange things are happening in the Massachusetts resort town of Buzzards Bay, where a group of old college friends has reunited at a large summer house.

Jim, the narrator, a lawyer, inherited the ancestral home and turned it into a retreat for his circle of close friends. He and his wife, Valentina, and twin children are joined there by Maya, an art teacher, and her pregnant wife, Shannon; Rami, a diplomat who spends much of his time in Europe; and Jim’s late-arriving, ill-tempered best friend, Bruce, writer of a popular series of crime-solving novels about a philosophy professor. A physical brawl between Jim and Bruce and the latter’s subsequent disappearance are the first of a string of odd, unexplained events to pierce the idyllic surroundings. Is the creaking and heaving house “troubled,” as is suggested by a "self-appointed medium” from the local library who convinces Jim to conduct a séance there? The woman fails to make contact with Bruce or anyone else, succeeding only in stirring up unpleasant thoughts among the friends—and between Jim and Valentina in both their waking and dream lives. “Little secrets, all around: Somehow, they never brought me anything but pleasure,” muses Jim. Until they don’t. Though the climax seems forced, the sly, subversive way Murphy undercuts Agatha Christie and Big Chill tropes keeps the reader on edge. As with his previous novel, The Stolen Coast (2023), he makes the most of the coastal setting, advancing the belief of Jim’s forebearers that it has “a special wavelength or disposition” conducive to ghosts.

Another top-notch effort by Murphy, one of the most distinctive of young crime-oriented novelists.