Hemlock House

June 1, 2024
Two years down the road from the traumatic events of Liar's Beach (2023), a Harvard freshman finds a second corpse--this time in his girlfriend's bed. Cotugno kits out her whodunit with the requisite red herrings, enigmatic clues, sudden twists, and even an Agatha Christie-style denouement that wraps things up. But her sequel's focus and drive center on the emotionally messy romantic triangle that develops as Linden finds himself caught between a rekindled relationship with former high school classmate Greer and a previously platonic one with close childhood friend Holiday. It's Greer's roommate who winds up in her bed, wearing her clothes, and dead of an apparent overdose while, as in the opener, Holiday is the story's observant, analytical Poirot--to the point that she's the one who actually goes ahead and sets up the climactic scene after making a few telling discoveries while Linden is stewing at home, suspended in the wake of being framed for a rash of student pilferage. Along with marveling anew that Linden, the still thoroughly self-centered and clueless narrator, has any love life at all, readers will be less likely to be swept up in the details of the crime than the tale's whirl of intelligent banter, alcohol-fueled parties, hormonal heat, and pretty post-adolescent confusion. Main characters present white. Dark doings and mildly steamy desire in the dorms. (Mystery. 14-18)

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