NOT WHAT SHE SEEMS

In a dramatic change from Angoe’s trilogy about professional assassin Nina Knight, a disgraced daughter returns to her South Carolina family to find that it’s in even bigger trouble than she thought.

Jacinda Brodie has already had quite the day before she learns of her beloved grandfather’s heart attack. Conrad Meckleson, her ex-mentor and ex-lover, has persuaded the D.C. college where she’s a teaching assistant to deny her a research fellowship she thought was in the bag. And he’s landed a fat contract for a book he hopes will return him to bestseller lists, a story based on family secrets she confided in him, the most shocking of which is that Jac pushed her father, Brook Haven police chief Montavious Brodie Jr., over a cliff to his death. Resolved that her story is hers alone, Jac lets herself into Meckleson’s place, packs up the notes he’s taken over the years, and dashes off a series of bridge-burning emails to the college administrators on her way out the door. Back home in Brook Haven, things are even worse. Her grandfather, Montavious Brodie Sr., the only family member who hasn’t judged Jac harshly, dies shortly after her arrival, leaving her to solace herself with old school friends Sawyer Okoye, now an administrator for the police, and Nicolas Tate, the mayor’s son. Jac instantly takes against Faye Arden, the mayor’s pushy fiancee, who’s renovating the notorious Murder Manor, where the caretaker reportedly killed over a dozen victims 50 years ago, into Moor Manor. Her granddad’s heart attack, Jac decides, was engineered by Faye. Just in case the enmity between the two women isn’t fierce enough, Meckleson pops up to accuse Jac of theft.

Endless skeletons in the family closet, all disclosed by a protagonist who makes one reckless move after another.