THE RESEMBLANCE

A homicide detective uncovers dark secrets about a local fraternity as she investigates a hit-and-run.

Detective Marlitt Kaplan happens to be on the University of Georgia campus when an unknown driver hits and kills a student. The victim, Jay Kemp, is a member of the Kappa Phi Omicron fraternity. While his fellow Kap-Os insist that they are shocked and grief-stricken, Marlitt is convinced they have something to hide. The ensuing story is part police procedural, part general critique of the Greek system. Marlitt has a long-standing grudge against fraternities and all the avoidable tragedies that happen under their watch. “I collect them,” Marlitt says early on, “these horrendously sad and never-ending accounts all across the nation, pile them up in my memory, so I can bury the thing at its core.” Her obsession keeps the investigation, and the plot, progressing at a fair clip even as her fellow police begin to discourage her persistence. This obsession can also, however, veer into didacticism. She has such a vendetta against the frat brothers, for example—from the “golden boy” chapter president, Tripp Holmes, to Michael Williams, the charming but ruthless son of the university’s president—that her narration tends to flatten them into caricatures. Still, suspense-filled scenes, like an ill-conceived undercover mission at a “Hawaiian nights” party, keep the pages turning, and there are many gripping questions that will keep readers glued to the page. Why did the driver look exactly like the victim? And why was he driving the victim’s car? Why, during the novel’s shocking midway point, does Marlitt wake in the night screaming a language she doesn’t speak? The answers are genuinely surprising, if at times unsatisfying. Overall, it’s a fun read with some surprising twists that will keep readers on their toes.

A competent detective thriller with an overly moralizing narrator.