Watch Her

Hill’s taut third Hester Thursby mystery (after 2019’s The Missing Ones) centers on Boston’s Prescott University, a for-profit art school run by the predatory Matson family. Thirty-something Vanessa Matson acts as president, her husband is CFO, and working-class Maxine Pawlikowski slaves tirelessly as director of admissions. All seems well, until Maxine discovers some dodgy enrollment data. She taps diminutive but dauntless Harvard research librarian Hester, who sleuths on the side, to resolve the discrepancies, which reveal a web of troubles, including the mysterious drowning of a Matson toddler decades ago. When a pregnant Prescott coed is murdered, the scandals burst forth to embroil Hester, the police, and a renegade graffiti artist. This complex case revolves around “mothers and daughters,” as Hester knowingly muses, confronting fissures in her family as well as the Matsons’. Quirky characters complement the suspenseful plot. Readers will agree that a failing school makes a grade-A mystery. Agent: Robert Guinsler, Sterling Lord Literistic. (Jan.)