THE BROTHERS KENNEY

A washed-up track star back in his hometown for the worst reason in the world resolves to investigate a death nobody but him thinks is suspicious.

Sean Kenney has competed with his brother ever since they both ran the 1600-meter event at East Carlisle High School. Although Michael Kenney was so fast that he was nicknamed Kick, Sean was even faster—until his failure to make it to the Olympics left him drained of ambition and will and identity, after which he left town and cut all ties with his family. When his sister, Katie, visits him in New Orleans after two years of silence on both sides to tell him their father’s early-onset Alzheimer’s disease has killed him, he returns with her to New Jersey, only to find that Michael Sr. is still alive; it’s Kick who’s died, but Katie thought if she told him the truth he wouldn’t have come home. The police are satisfied that Kick, a wealthy investment banker, shot himself, but Sean, who had spoken to him on the phone hours earlier, is certain they’re wrong and sets out to prove it. The major problem isn’t the evidence against Sean but the likelihood that, if Kick was murdered, the killer was almost certainly someone very close to both brothers: Kick’s wife, Jenny; Katie or her husband, Ben Whitting; or Rachel Fischer, Kick’s ex-girlfriend and Sean’s ex-lover, whom Sean promptly takes up with again because it was “the only way I could think of to turn back time.” In the end, Sean, who thought he wanted to learn the truth about his brother’s death, discovers a great deal more than he wanted to.

Twisty and affecting. The last twist is one too many, but the sorrow and love shine through to the end.