The Perfect Guests

This neatly plotted if somewhat credulity-stretching psychological thriller from Rous (The Au Pair) opens in 1988 at Norfolk, England’s Raven Hall, where 14-year-old Beth Soames is beginning a foster placement with Markus Meyer and Leonora Averell as companion for their curiously isolated daughter, Nina, also 14, who is homeschooled and forbidden to venture into the local village. Jump forward 31 years to London, where actor Sadie Langton is hired to play a guest at a glamorous murder mystery weekend being staged at a historic mansion. A subsequent flashback finds an unidentified young woman sneaking onto the Raven Hall grounds, seething over having what she regards as her birthright stolen. Rous skillfully juggles the trio of plotlines, maximizing suspense as to how they eventually collide. As seductive but secretly treacherous as Raven Hall itself, this novel delivers devour-in-a-day diversion, even if some revelations end up as contrived as the entertainment for which Sadie has been hired. Rous has upped her game with this one. Agent: Rebecca Ritchie, A.M. Heath (U.K.). (Jan.)