Friends and Liars

This slow-burn whodunit from Frick (The Split) finds college friends Harper, Luca, Sirina, and David in Lake Como, Italy, to celebrate New Year’s Eve at their wealthy friend Clare Monroe’s glamorous palazzo. Amid the group’s midnight feasting, frolicking, and firework lighting, Clare goes missing. The next morning, she’s found dead. Clare’s father, powerful Hollywood venture capitalist Samuel Monroe, deems her death an accidental drowning and discourages any further investigation. Five years later, as a new art center is poised to open near Lake Como in Clare’s honor, Samuel offers his daughter’s surviving friends an all-expenses-paid trip back to Italy to celebrate the occasion. Though they’re slightly uneasy about revisiting the past, all four accept, only to realize, shortly after they arrive, that they’ve launched themselves into a game of cat and mouse with a blackmailer. Each friend narrates in rotating chapters, while Frick gradually doles out details about the precise nature of Clare’s death and the reasons each one of them is nursing private guilt about it. It takes a while for the plot to kick into gear, but once it does, this becomes a slickly satisfying ride. It’ll put a smile on thriller fans’ faces. Agent: Joelle Hobeika, Alloy Entertainment. (Dec.)