RECONSTRUCTING AMELIA

Former attorney McCreight pens a multilayered legal thriller.

Single mom Kate Baron struggles with the unholy demands that come with being an associate at a high-powered New York City law firm while raising her 15-year-old daughter, Amelia. A child born out of wedlock, Amelia doesn’t know who her father is, and Kate, for some reason that never really becomes clear, fails to share this information with her. While curious about her dad’s identity, Amelia has other, more pressing issues about which to worry. For one thing, she has been tapped for membership in her ritzy private school’s illicit all-girls club, a fact she’s hiding from her best friend, Sylvia, as well as her mother. But when Kate receives a call from the school that she must leave a meeting and come pick up her daughter because good-girl Amelia has been suspended for cheating, Kate’s world completely crumbles. Running late to collect her daughter, Kate doesn’t arrive until pretty, smart, blonde Amelia has fallen from the school roof, a victim of her own failure. Or at least that’s what the police are telling Kate, but she doesn’t believe Amelia killed herself. When she receives an anonymous text message, it prompts her to prove that Amelia was murdered. The author tells the story in flashbacks, alternating between Kate's and Amelia's point of view, leading up to the day Amelia died. Although the expensive and exclusive school comes across as a cauldron out of hell and a bit over-the-top, the book never bogs down and comes to a seamless and unanticipated conclusion.

Readers will need to swallow the premise that a police homicide investigator would allow the mother of a victim to tag along on the investigation and question witnesses, but otherwise, this is a solid debut novel.