Confessions of a Murder Suspect (review)

One fateful night, Tandy Angel opens the door of her family's luxurious suite in New York's Dakota Hotel to find police responding to a 911 call. When she goes to get her parents, she discovers them dead in their room. Tandy's investigation into her parents' death is interspersed with short "Confession" chapters that offer insight into what drives each of the Angel siblings—and why each of them, especially Tandy herself, could easily be the murderer. Since the whole family is genius-level smart and maladjusted to the point of sociopathy, their motives include a veritable checklist of mystery-genre reveals, from clandestine affairs and suspicious past deaths to secret human experimentation and financial malfeasance at the family's pharmaceutical empire. The overload of eccentricity here (in everything from Tandy's parents' disciplinary practices to the bizarre installation art that fills their home to secondary characters named such things as Capricorn Caputo and Royal Rampling) will appeal to readers who like their mysteries aggressively quirky, but the quirkiness can veer into cutesiness at times, undercutting the genuine creepiness of the situation. Furthermore, the numerous red herrings turn out to be significantly more interesting than the reality revealed at the end. However, the fun of searching through this onslaught of dysfunction for a workable motive and means can't be beat, and readers will be drawn inexorably into Tandy's world of paranoia and manipulation as they try to put the pieces together.