A volcanic eruption is quite another, for, as the journalist who does a framing voice-over narration for Brooks’ latest puts it, when Mount Rainier popped its cork, “it was the psychological aspect, the hyperbole-fueled hysteria that had ended up killing the most people.” Maybe, but the sasquatches whom the volcano displaced contributed to the statistics, too, if only out of self-defense.
The whodunit aspect surrounding this death pales against the dark sexual and psychological currents that ripple among the girls (and Coach) the question of who is emotional victim versus who is predator becomes murkier and more disturbing than any detective puzzle.Ĭompelling, claustrophobic and slightly creepy in a can’t-put-it-down way.Īre we not men? We are-well, ask Bigfoot, as Brooks does in this delightful yarn, following on his bestseller World War Z (2006).Ī zombie apocalypse is one thing. But Beth’s simmering resentment and jealousy concerning Addy’s relationship with Coach have reached a boiling point by the time the officer turns up dead in his apartment.
When Beth and Addy catch Coach having sex in the faculty lounge with a handsome National Guard recruiting officer assigned to the high school, Addy swears Beth to silence. Soon, Addy is spending more time at Coach’s house than anyone else. Addy tries to balance her increasingly divided loyalties but is gradually pulled into Coach’s orbit. In particular, Coach befriends Addy, whose relationship with Beth has been strained since a dark episode at cheerleading camp the summer before. The girls respond to her tight discipline as well as to her perfect hair and her invitations to hang out at her carefully decorated house, where she lives with her workaholic husband and little girl. Skilled at manipulation, Coach has the early upper hand. A battle of wills ensues between Coach and Beth. She immediately asserts her authority, not only taking away the girls’ cell phones, but also announcing there will be no squad captain. Then a new coach, young and pretty Colette French, arrives. The cheerleaders are popular mean girls, and Beth is the meanest and most popular. Narrator Addy has been lifelong best friend to Beth, now the powerful captain of Sutton Grove High School’s cheerleading squad. The setting is an unnamed, frighteningly familiar town that could be found anywhere in contemporary America. Following the direction taken by her last novel ( The End of Everything, 2011, etc.), Edgar winner Abbott again delivers an unsettling look at the inner life of adolescent girls in the guise of a crime story.
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