The Last Summer of the Camperdowns

Rebecca Gibel has her work cut out for her in performing this novel, whose characters lack verisimilitude, to put it mildly. In Kelly's world even people with "no money" have oceanfront Cape Cod estates with multiple horses in the stable. The plot hangs on a frightening secret a 12-year-old girl named Riddle is keeping for reasons the author doesn't begin to make convincing. On the other hand, Kelly's prose is snappy and aggressively clever, and she keeps the gothic plot moving at a good clip. Gibel gamely performs and even succeeds in giving some emotional cohesion to several minor characters. My favorite is Gin, the selfish, gossipy horse-obsessed bachelor neighbor whom she plays with a slight drawl and a tiny speech defect. Gibel has a lovely voice and may make the listen worth your while. B.G. (c) AudioFile 2013, Portland, Maine

March 25, 2013
Kelly’s raucous, deliciously creepy novel about the dysfunction of the über wealthy begins in 1972 as the hoity-toity Camperdown clan prepare for another summer of horseback riding, fox hunting, and hors d’oeuvres in their cushy Cape Cod enclave. Godfrey “Camp” Camperdown, running for a seat in Congress, hobnobs away while his ex-movie-star ice-queen wife Greer—the brawn and beauty behind the campaign—entertains the guests and their 12-year-old daughter Riddle James (named after Jimmy Hoffa), who narrates as an adult. The novel threatens to veer too predictably into Great Gatsby territory (long-buried secrets bubbling to the surface, a sticky love triangle, a sniveling neighbor’s single-minded obsession with breeding gypsy horses) but is saved by precocious Riddle’s dry-witted narration of events, at least until she witnesses a heinous murder and clams up. While what actually happened the night of the crime is made plain early on, Kelly (Apologize, Apologize!) builds suspense by withholding the perpetrator’s motivations and the characters’ knowledge of who did it until the end. When the truth finally emerges amid a whirlwind of flying accusations and shattered lives—in a climax that’s a touch too hurried compared to the book’s languid pace—no one, not even the creepy killer, escapes unscathed. And everyone, at least in part, is to blame. Agent: Molly Friedrich, the Friedrich Agency.