SKULL

Two detectives investigate a family’s mysterious murder and encounter a network of sex and conspiracy. 

Detectives Mitchell and Sandovan are given a tip from a petty criminal so implausible it rings true: During the burglary of a posh home, he discovered a family of four dead at the dinner table. The detectives find the Harbmans just as described—the parents, their son, and his girlfriend—seated in funerary stillness, presiding grimly over a partially eaten roast beef, a scene chillingly depicted by author Williams (Shank, 2017, etc.). Angela, the 20-year-old daughter of the Harbman family, is missing and is later found hiding in a panic room within the house, nearly dead. A toxicology report reveals that the family was poisoned with Carfentanil, an opioid that dwarfs heroin in potency. The Harbmans initially seem like an innocuous clan, but as the detectives dig deeper, they find a long list of suspects, a colorful spectrum of humanity intelligently depicted by the author. First, their insufferably aristocratic neighbors openly detested them for class jumping; the Harbmans became uber-rich by winning a lottery. Neighbor Mr. Kovich claims Angela nearly ruined his son by seducing him. And the Harbmans’ housekeeper, Ms. Lindstrom, once served prison time for poisoning a prior employer. But a cloud of suspicion hangs over Angela as well. Her sexual appetite is purported to be “insatiable” and nearly indiscriminate. To make matters more complicated (and increasingly dubious), someone who is clearly trying to obstruct the investigation plots against Mitchell’s girlfriend, Mya, attempting to destroy her career. Williams vividly constructs a morally confounding world in which good and evil are messily intermixed: “The unpredictability of humanity puzzled Mitchell. He saw more shades of it than most. People were capable of exceptional generosity but also exceptional cruelty. Sometimes they were interwoven in the same strands of DNA.” The writing is acidly sharp and often laced with wit, though the author isn’t above indulging in detective-talk clichés: “He’s going away for a long stretch.” The plot strains the reader’s credulity for the sake of gratuitous complexity, but the characters are so deftly drawn, and the drama so lucidly described, it simply doesn’t matter. 

An action-packed murder mystery, buoyantly written and suspenseful.