The Reunion

Intense nostalgia and simmering guilt drive this evocative mystery from Musso (Afterwards), a bestseller in France. In 1992, 19-year-old Vinca Rockwell, an American student at an elite boarding school in Anitibes, France, and her 27-year-old philosophy teacher, Alexis Clément, create a scandal when, as many believe, they run off together to Paris. In 2017, Thomas Degalais, a friend of Vinca who graduated from the same school 25 years earlier, knows this didn’t happen, because he killed Alexis, in the belief that the teacher abused Vinca, and walled him up in the freshly poured concrete of the new gym with the help of a friend’s father, a builder. Vinca was never seen again. At a reunion, the crime’s loose ends become an urgent matter for Thomas and two other friends of Vinca, Maxime Biancardini and Fanny Brahimi, who come to realize someone connected to those events is seeking revenge. Musso moves effortlessly between the violent past and the increasingly dangerous present as complicated relationships and tragic misunderstandings unfold. It’s all a tad melodramatic, but readers interested in the dark side of the good life on the Cote d’Azur will be satisfied. (July)