Never Saw Me Coming

Eighteen-year-old Chloe Sevre, the narrator of Kurian’s splendid debut, is a freshman at John Adams University in Washington, D.C. She’s delighted to be in “a busy city with a relatively high murder rate,” because she has a plan that she has been nurturing for six years: to kill Will Bachman, a childhood friend who cruelly hurt her and lives in D.C. Chloe is one of seven students diagnosed as psychopaths receiving free tuition in exchange for participating in the university’s Multimethod Psychopathy Panel Study. It’s overseen by an earnest psychology professor who believes that, with the right direction, psychopaths can lead productive lives. Then one of the subjects of the study is fatally stabbed, and shortly thereafter another participant dies horribly. Chloe and two other surviving students, including the son of the Virginia state chairman for the Republican National Committee, realize they could be the next victims and do their best to band together to find the killer. Excellent pacing, sprightly narrative voices, and judicious dabs of wry humor make this a highly entertaining tale. Kurian’s refreshingly different slant on psychopathy marks her as a writer to watch. Agent: Rebecca Scherer, Jane Rotrosen Agency. (Sept.)