THE LAST NIGHT OUT

A bachelorette party changes the lives of six Chicago women.

Longtime friends Kelly Delaney, Suzanne Lundgren, Carol Anne Niebaum, Natasha Dietrich, and Angela Lupino Wozniak don’t realize how much their celebration of Margaret Mary Trueheart’s upcoming wedding to Flynn Hamilton will affect all of their lives. Carol Anne and Natasha get off easiest. They have to endure some probing questions from the police, but their money and positions as wives of well-off professionals insulate them from the worst of the night’s consequences. Successful securities broker Suzanne has to worry that all the questioning may hurt her business and expose her relationship with married real estate mogul Vince Columbo. Grad student Kelly is afraid her guilt about what happened that night may send her back down the painful road of drug and alcohol abuse she thought she’d left behind. Still worse off is Maggie, the bride-to-be. After waking up with handsome young carpenter Steven Kaufman in her bed, she’s now forced to reassess her upcoming marriage to Flynn. But the partygoer who’s unquestionably hurt worst by the night’s events is Angela; she’s dead. The discovery of her battered body in Lincoln Park sends shock waves through this close-knit group but also helps each woman come into her own in the turbulent 1980s. As the women struggle for redemption, detectives Ron O’Reilly and Joseph Kozlowski have a humbler task: They have to figure out who killed Angie, a puzzle as frustrating as it is ingenious.

The creator of the High Society mysteries (Well Read and Dead, 2009, etc.) has produced a stand-alone that does for the 1980s what Mary McCarthy’s The Group did for the '30s, with more than a little mystification thrown in.