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In Orr’s mystery, a very wealthy man is nearly killed one night in the hospital, and he can’t shake the feeling that someone in his affluent, influential family is responsible.

After his brush with death, Charlie Cantling hires Benjamin Gould, an agent of the powerful Byrne and Company, to investigate what happened and uncover the truth. The Goulds, it turns out, have a long history with the Cantlings; Benjamin spent summers at the Cantlings’ house as a youth, so he’s naturally wary when Charlie asks him to investigate whether his wife and adult children were responsible for the attempt on his life. The culprit could be Charlie’s daughter Melanie, who makes clear that she’s willing to use illegal substances for her own gain, or it might be his son, Theo, whose erratic behavior makes his motivations very difficult to read. Maybe it’s daughter Ann, for whom both Benjamin and his brother, Jody, have complex feelings. However, Benjamin eventually learns that the already-thorny situation is even more complex than he thought. As Jody notes to Benjamin early on, “You might have had a scholarship to Yale, but you don’t know shit about Charlie Cantling.” Orr’s novel relies heavily on maintaining a mysterious atmosphere and nearly everyone is a suspect to some degree; Benjamin quickly finds that everyone has their guards up, and for very good reason. The stakes in this story involve inheritance money, of course, but also who gets to control the next generation of the Cantling legacy. As things clarify over the course of this exciting tale, however, astute readers get opportunities to pick up on oddities that will unlock the mystery. Some of these readers, though, may find the ending to be somewhat contrived; in its attempts to surprise, the narrative finally falls into familiar tropes and patterns, employing obvious red herrings and foreshadowing.

A knotted and frequently engaging tale of deception and family secrets.