FIND COURTNEY

The perfect roommate disappears, leaving behind a perfectly impenetrable mystery.

Courtney Armorault is everything her new roommate isn’t: Florida rich, Florida blonde, Florida toned, and glowingly self-confident, with every reason to be. When she goes out jogging one morning after her protein shake and doesn’t return, Fanoy, a matter-of-fact loner who’s so secretive she won’t even tell anybody her first name, simply ignores Courtney’s disappearance, instead moving into her opulent bedroom, watching her widescreen TV, and listening to the messages pile up on her answering machine. Her idyll ends when Courtney’s father turns up, but Bret Armorault’s behavior only throws more curves into the mystery. Blown off by the local cops, the shady financier scoops Fanoy under his arm, makes the scant rounds of witnesses together with her, takes her back to his place, and installs her in a fairy-tale bedroom. Fanoy, who’s never had much use for the father who abandoned her for a nubile stepmother, describes each episode with seductively affectless insouciance, like an R-rated Eloise involved in an increasingly enigmatic series of games.

Like a practiced spider, Clark (Devlyn, not reviewed) spins a surprisingly tensile web from the slenderest threads possible.