A Flaw in the Design
A Novel
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3.0 • 1 Rating
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- $13.99
Publisher Description
A professor’s life is turned upside down when he takes in his charming, wildly dangerous nephew, whose wealthy parents have just died under mysterious circumstances, in this propulsive, edge-of-your-seat debut psychological thriller.
“An absolute page-turner . . . I read it in a single sitting.”—Miranda Cowley Heller, bestselling author of The Paper Palace
The cleverest psychopaths hide in plain sight.
Gil is living a quiet life as a creative writing professor in a bucolic Vermont town, when he receives some shocking news: His sister and her husband have been killed in a car accident, and their only son is coming to live with him and his family.
Gil and his wife are apprehensive about taking in seventeen-year-old Matthew. Yes, he has just lost both his parents, but they haven’t seen him in seven years—and the last time the families were together, Matthew lured their young daughter into a terrifying, life-threatening situation. Since that incident, Gil has been estranged from his sister and her flashy, wealthy banker husband.
Now Matthew is their charge, living under their roof.
The boy seems charming, smart, and urbane, if strangely unaffected by his parents’ deaths. Gil hopes they can put the past behind them, though he’s surprised when Matthew signs up for his creative writing class. Then Matthew begins turning in chilling stories about the imagined deaths of Gil’s family and his own parents. Bewildered and panicked, Gil ultimately decides he must take matters into his own hands—before life imitates art.
Told in limber, mesmerizing prose, A Flaw in the Design is a twisting novel of suspense that brilliantly explores the tensions surrounding class, family, and the drive to control one’s own story.
APPLE BOOKS REVIEW
There’s a fine line between delusional paranoia and real, life-or-death danger in this tense psychological thriller. Gil’s low-key life with his wife, Molly, and their two daughters is shaken up when his sister suddenly dies, making him and Molly the guardians of their teen nephew, Matthew. The main problem? Years ago, Gil’s daughter Ingrid nearly drowned because of Matthew—and Gil hasn’t trusted him since, even suspecting the boy was responsible for his own mother’s death. Nathan Oates excels at creating tension, juxtaposing Gil’s neurotic quest to uncover the truth with Matthew’s teenage sense of detachment. Full of doubts, clues, and clever red herrings, A Flaw in the Design has everything you want in a psychological thriller. By the time the book careens toward its wild climax, you won’t be sure whom to believe.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
In this gripping psychological thriller from Oates (The Empty House), 17-year-old Matthew's wealthy Manhattanite parents have died in a suspicious car accident, and the newly orphaned high school senior goes to live with his uncle Gil and Gil's family in Vermont. Gil is uneasy about this arrangement: as a boy, Matthew stood by as Gil's daughter nearly drowned in a pool; Matthew cursed viciously at his French nanny; and even his mother admitted Matthew had difficulties. However, Gil, a creative writing professor, has stalled in his career, is badly in debt, and has reasons to be jealous of this handsome, often charming young man with a multimillion-dollar trust fund. So the question that drives the narrative is whether Gil projects his own hostility onto Matthew, or whether Matthew is a sociopath who has killed his parents for the inheritance. Meanwhile, Matthew writes disturbing stories about his family for Gil's class, setting Matthew and Gil on a collision course. This immersive page-turner cleverly juxtaposes the writing of short fiction with the production of stories in people's minds. Oates is definitely a writer to watch.
Customer Reviews
All Talk No Action
Well-written. Nevertheless the plot is endlessly propulsive but never gets anywhere, ultimately with no pay-off. One of those books in which you feel ripped off…you keep waiting for something to happen and it never does. :(