Suburban school teacher, Kristin Chapman encourages her husband to throw his brother's bachelor party, since they have a spacious home in Westchester County. The plan is for Kris and their daughter to spend the night with her mother in her Manhattan apartment. The plan quickly goes awry when the party descends into bacchanalian drunkenness -- the "dancers" offer more than lap dances. Richard (the party's host) does nothing to try and control the situation, and instead goes upstairs with one of the "dancers" where they share an intimate moment, caught on video, in the daughter's bedroom.The other young woman, suddenly fed up with her life as a sex slave, gets her hands on a knife and stabs to death, one of the large Russian bodyguards while the other guests stand speechless in the living room. Alexandra takes the dead guard's gun and kills the other one. The party is officially over, and a chilling game of cat and mouse begins. I have been a fan of Chris Bohjalian's work for quite some time, and while this book has a promising plot, it never really develops. What should have been a nice murder mystery became a trite suburban soap opera, which I was sorry I wasted my time on.
336 pages
