The Reunion

May 27, 2019
Intense nostalgia and simmering guilt drive this evocative mystery from Musso (Afterwards), a bestseller in France. In 1992, 19-year-old Vinca Rockwell, an American student at an elite boarding school in Anitibes, France, and her 27-year-old philosophy teacher, Alexis Clément, create a scandal when, as many believe, they run off together to Paris. In 2017, Thomas Degalais, a friend of Vinca who graduated from the same school 25 years earlier, knows this didn’t happen, because he killed Alexis, in the belief that the teacher abused Vinca, and walled him up in the freshly poured concrete of the new gym with the help of a friend’s father, a builder. Vinca was never seen again. At a reunion, the crime’s loose ends become an urgent matter for Thomas and two other friends of Vinca, Maxime Biancardini and Fanny Brahimi, who come to realize someone connected to those events is seeking revenge. Musso moves effortlessly between the violent past and the increasingly dangerous present as complicated relationships and tragic misunderstandings unfold. It’s all a tad melodramatic, but readers interested in the dark side of the good life on the Cote d’Azur will be satisfied.

Narrator Samuel West's cultured British voice is tinged with nostalgic angst in his portrayal of Thomas in this translated French thriller. Thomas's twenty-five-year reunion brings him to the C�te d'Azur for a chance to see friends and check on the skeleton in his closet, which is related to the disappearance of his unrequited teen love, Vinca, during his last year of school. Thomas's best friends, Maxime and Manon, have been keeping secrets, as well. West's tone becomes increasingly panicked as Thomas follows the twists of Vinca's disappearance and a trail strewn with fresh bodies. It would give away too much to name the characters voiced by Cassie Layton, Clare Wille, and David Rintoul, but they all bring perspectives seething with emotion that is shared in revelatory bursts. S.T.C. � AudioFile 2019, Portland, Maine