Hemlock Grove

In screenwriter McGreevy’s smartly constructed debut novel, a former mill town is swept with fear when the corpse of a local teen is discovered. The crime scene lacks the usual clues, though the wounds point to an unidentifiable animal. At Hemlock Grove High School, eyes immediately turn to Peter Rumancek, a new senior rumored to be a werewolf. Peter is grudgingly persuaded by Roman Godfrey—heir to an old family fortune whose assets lie in the Godfrey Institute for Biomedical Technologies—to find the real killer. Meanwhile, Roman must deal with his bizarre family—his cousin, Letha, who insists she was impregnated by an angel; his younger sister, Shelley, whose preternatural intelligence is housed in a grotesque body; and his mother, Olivia, an icy beauty with a tendency to faint. Propelled by the clockwork appearance of bodies, Roman and Peter follow a trail of clues that lead them to dig up a victim’s grave and to a mysterious project headed by slick genius Dr. Pryce at the Godfrey Institute. Not only does their investigation reveal the killer, it also uncovers many Godfrey family secrets in the process. McGreevy cleverly contemporizes the gothic novel, underlining the isolations of modern-day technology and adolescence in this engaging, though occasionally affected, literary horror novel. (Apr.)