Parents Weekend

An exclusive private school where CEOs, doctors, and government officials send their children gets shaken up by the disappearance of five students in Finlay’s fleet if familiar latest thriller featuring FBI agent Sarah Keller (after The Night Shift). Troubled scholarship student Felix Goffman is an outlier at Northern California’s prestigious Santa Clara University, but he and his dormmates have nevertheless become close friends. On the first night of Parents Weekend, the students and their parents agree to eat together. Annoyance turns to fear as the hours pass and the students fail to show up, especially because Natasha Belov, daughter of a wealthy businessman, has been recently found dead in a nearby sea cave. The case gets sent to Agent Keller, since U.S. assistant secretary of state Cynthia Roosevelt’s son, Blane, is among the missing students. Blane’s not the only child of a high-profile parent in the cohort: Libby Akana’s father, judge Kenneth Akana, oversaw actor Rock Nelson’s headline-grabbing domestic violence trial and angered the star’s fans. Juggling those clues, Agent Keller races to uncover the truth as the case becomes an online sensation. Finlay writes in a conventional register, with red herrings galore, and he caps the proceedings with a particularly shocking conclusion. Fans of Mary Higgins Clark will enjoy themselves. (May)