Three Graves Full

Mason strides confidently into Coen brothers territory with her highly entertaining, solidly plotted debut about loneliness and the need for companionship. Sad sack Jason Getty has lived in fear ever since killing a man in a rage and burying the body in a remote corner of his yard some 17 months earlier. Just as the guilt-stricken Jason decides that he has gotten away with the crime, the landscaping crew he’s hired to clean up his neglected property find a body under the mulch bed beneath his bedroom window. Police later unearth a second body nearby. Neither is the man he murdered. While the police investigate and Jason worries about that third body, Leah Tamblin becomes obsessed with discovering if one of the bodies is Reid Reynolds, her often unfaithful fiancé who disappeared 13 days before their wedding. With sly wit Mason tweaks genre clichés while respecting crime fiction tenets. Agent: Amy Moore-Benson, AMB Literary Management. (Feb.)