The Ninth Step

A fatal car accident propels this sharp and edgy novel, Jerkins’s third (after At the End of the Road and A Very Simple Crime). Veterinarian Helen Patrice, after a night of heavy drinking, hits the car driven by Edgar Woolrich, ninth-grade geometry teacher in the town of Mantissa Cove, killing Edgar’s wife, the passenger in his car. Helen flees the scene in a panic, and quickly repairs and repaints her car. After a botched suicide attempt, the remorseful Helen joins Alcoholics Anonymous, where she discovers that the ninth step to recovery is to make direct amends to people you have injured. Meanwhile, the obsessive, methodical Edgar, who wasn’t seriously hurt in the crash, is using charts, graphs, and mathematical probabilities to narrow the field of culpable drivers. You don’t have to be a math geek to appreciate this darkly comic, consistently surprising, and agreeably macabre tale. Agent: Robert Guinsler, Sterling Lord Literistic. (Sept.)