THIS IS WHY WE LIED

Georgia Bureau of Investigation agent Will Trent and medical examiner Sara Linton honeymoon at a family lodge that includes breathtaking landscapes, varied guests, troubled family dynamics, and murder.

McAlpine Family Lodge manager Mercy McAlpine has been an outcast within her family ever since Dave McAlpine, an orphan whom her parents adopted, got her pregnant at 15. To her enduring shame, her relatives, from her aunt Delilah to her own brother, Christopher, took Dave to their hearts even as they squeezed her out, snatching baby Jon from her to be raised mostly by Delilah. Sixteen years later, when her father, Cecil, plans to sell the lodge whose operation Mercy’s poured herself into, she’s had enough, and evidently so have they. Hours after she announces her intention to ruin the lives of any family members who vote with Cecil to sell the place to Max Brouwer and Sydney Flynn for $12 million, Will finds her fatally stabbed near Lake McAlpine, and she dies in his arms. The half-dozen other guests are icing on the cake, since every one of Mercy’s relatives had a powerful motive to kill her. The honeymoon isn’t exactly over, but Will tells Sara he’d be committed to investigating even if Chuck, the fellow guest who tormented Will in the orphanage where they both grew up, weren’t on hand as Christopher’s lecherous best friend. The high-octane story inevitably lags when Faith Mitchell, Will’s partner in the GBI, arrives to question the suspects, but the shattering climax reveals that the McAlpine family is even more dysfunctional than you imagined.

One character nails it: This is “an Agatha Christie locked-room mystery with a VC Andrews twist.”