HOW TO KILL YOUR BEST FRIEND

A group of university friends who’ve flown to an island paradise to mark the passing of one of their number finds that her death has brought the conflicts among the survivors to a boil.

Lissa Kateb, Georgie Ayers, and Bronwyn Miller were all competitive swimmers when they were in school together. So it seems especially ironic that Lissa has drowned in Kanu Cove, where her husband, Jem Kateb, manages a luxury resort. Now that the survivors have accepted Jem’s offer of free accommodations on the occasion of Lissa’s memorial service, cracks gradually begin to appear in their nostalgic group portrait. Years ago, Bron had cheated on her husband, Rob Miller, with Lissa’s first husband, Graeme Williams, who’s since died. Eternal singleton Georgie’s friendship with Lissa looks more and more like a rivalry. Nor are all the group’s problems in the present. Someone is sending Bron and Georgie mocking, vaguely threatening notes. Someone attacks Georgie—maybe a mugger, maybe someone after a bigger prize than her money. The sudden resignation of Jem’s assistant manager, Cristina, coincides all too neatly with the news that the resort is bleeding money and that Lissa’s high school buddy Duncan, a private equity powerhouse, has a larger stake in it than Georgie or Bron ever suspected. The question of whether Cristina has been embezzling only deepens when she turns up shot to death. As the paying guests drift away, the old school friends, left to ask how Lissa could possibly have drowned, realize that “once you suspect one of us, you have to suspect all of us.”

Slyly escalating head games that will make you think twice about booking that next getaway.