Teenagers can be horribly cruel to each other, even murderous, as headlines in the past year confirm. A three-time winner of the Arthur Ellis Award for Crime Fiction, Norah McClintock faces this cruelty through her likeable 16-year-old sleuth Chloe Yan.

When her stepfather is transferred to become police chief in the northern town of East Hastings, resentful Chloe misses Montreal and resists becoming involved with the new community. Then a schoolmate dies, his fall over a cliff treated as the suicide of a lonely nerd whose passion for astronomy compensated for a lack of friendship with his peers. Chloe, however, like her stepfather, begins to wonder. To her surprise, she is picked up by a group of popular, supercilious rich kids who had previously ignored her existence. The reader is alerted to suspect, before Chloe does, that their new friendliness might have something to do with her family connections to the police force. Chloe tells the story of her investigation in her own voice, revealing not only what she comes to know about her fellow students, but also her own smart, stubborn, and often prickly personality. Although her changing view of Peter, the boy who died, contains some jolting surprises near the end that seem incongruous with his previously established character, Chloe herself is engaging and believable. The last sentence hints at future investigations involving Chloe and her stepfather. The book’s taut writing, intriguing plot, and sense of contemporary reality bode well for a sequel.