Six Figures

Warner Lutz was ""the most negative person"" when his wife, Megan, first met him in grad school. Now he's 35, with two small children and a stultifying job, and what might have once been griping, vague discontent has become a bitter unhappiness. Though Warner makes a decent living fund-raising for a nonprofit organization in thriving Charlotte, N.C., the Lutz family, with a junky car and a cramped townhouse, is still scraping for cash amid their affluent neighbors. Warner longs for a home large enough for his wife and his two small children, preschooler Sophie and baby Daniel, while at the same time mourning his lost freedom. Megan, herself struggling in a low-paying job at an art gallery, becomes a focus of Warner's anger and frustration. He blames her for starting a family, for their hectic, dreary lives. When she is gravely injured in a violent attack during a break-in at the gallery, suspicion falls on Warner, who maintains his innocence though friends and family turn against him. In his first novel, Out West, Leebron painted a dark portrait of two ordinary young people who stumble into murder. Here, he treads the same psychological ground, delivering a misanthropic but likable protagonist who just might be a killer. With its fast pace and deft characterizations, this narrative is a gripping one-sitting read. But Leebron also invests the story with real depth and warmth. Warner is both tender and resentful toward his children and his wife, and the reader alternates between sympathy for his character and horror at what he might have done. This magnetic tale eludes tidy resolution, providing instead intriguing questions about whether anyone can really trust the ones they love. (Mar.)