Music and mayhem play out in the Vermont countryside in Lavine’s debut mystery.

Six months after the tragic death of his wife, Sam Thibeau is living a fairly uneventful life with his young son, Harry. They reside in a communelike neighborhood with several other families near hundreds of acres of Vermont wilderness. It’s a quiet life for Sam until he becomes aware of someone following him, whom he knows only as “Trapper Hat”; this person may be connected to mysterious clues and messages that lead Sam to actual buried treasure, in the form of diamonds, on his property. Sam begins digging up and selling the gems, and before long, a neighbor is murdered, Sam and Harry are threatened, and a dangerous Mexican cartel and Canadian drug syndicate become involved. At the same time, Sam, a concert-level pianist, is teaching a young woman named Sarah Patterson, who, after suffering a serious concussion, has gained an unusual musical gift. Amid all of this, Sam is falling for Cindy Yates, the police detective who’s investigating the murder and, eventually, the threats against Sam and Harry. All of this may seem like a lot for a reader to process, and it is, but in his debut novel, Lavine handles it all with a deft touch. One feels investment in the characters from the start, and the storytelling is well paced from beginning to end. The dialogue is crackling and skillful, and Lavine also has a gift for subtle, knowing humor, as in this tense passage, in which a police chase proceeds through a Trader Joe’s supermarket: “Rounding the end of the aisle, Miguel passed by a colorful display of seventeen different types of locally and organically produced yogurts.”

A sharp, deftly plotted thriller by a promising new author.