The Dead Girls Club

Maryland psychotherapist Heather Cole, the narrator of this underwhelming thriller from Walters (Paper Tigers), gets a disturbing reminder of her past when someone mails her a half-heart pendant that Heather last saw almost 30 years earlier, on the neck of her best friend, Becca Thomas, after she killed Becca. Flash back to 1991. Heather, Becca, and two other friends form the Dead Girls Club, based on their shared macabre interest in serial killers. The girls became obsessed with an urban legend that one of them shares about the spirit of a woman falsely accused of witchcraft and executed. Meanwhile in the present, Heather is frantic to identify her correspondent. She believes that she has a lead when she learns that Lauren Thomas, Becca’s mother, who was convicted of Becca’s murder, has recently been released from prison. Heather acts increasingly erratically, leaving the reader in doubt as to the reliability of her narration and memories right up to the over-the-top conclusion. This will work best for those who have never encountered a story about a group of women with murderous secrets in their past. Agent: Heather Flaherty, Bent Agency. (Dec.)