YOU WILL NEVER KNOW

Prentiss’ dark debut shows a Massachusetts family torn apart by murder.

This isn’t Jessica Thornton’s first stab at domestic bliss. Raised by a father who beat her mother and first wed to an alcoholic car salesman killed in a one-car DUI, she’s been married for three years to sweet, understanding realtor Ted Donovan. Ted’s son, computer geek Craig, and Jessica’s daughter, track star Emma, have never bonded, and Ted’s hit a dry patch that’s made the family depend more than ever on the pittance Jessica earns as a bank teller. But all this seems perfectly normal until Sam Warner, the bullying captain of the wrestling team at Craig and Emma’s high school, is shot to death on a night when both the kids had sneaked out of the house, allegedly to take part in a scavenger hunt arranged by an unidentified party, and Ted falsely claims to have been home watching TV with Jessica. As Detective Doug Rafferty, of the Warner Police Department, tracks down one lead after the other, evidence implicates someone in the family. Even more devastatingly, it becomes alarmingly clear that each family member’s loyalty is sharply limited. Jessica favors her daughter, Ted his son, and the children evidently no one but themselves rather than each other. The remorseless progress of Prentiss’ narrative, which rivals Harlan Coben’s suburban thrillers in its scope and mastery, reveals so many unspeakable secrets, most of them withheld from anyone else in the family, that the most urgent question that emerges is which of them is the biggest monster. The fade-out, pitilessly detailing the costs of their survival, is as horrifying as the threats that have been challenging them.

The most ruthlessly contractual account of family life you’ll ever read.