Dark academia? Count me in!

At a university in North Carolina, a small group of graduate students is working with Professor Joe Lyons on a research project about the propensity to lie. The conditions of the study sometimes go a little far in provoking a reaction from the subjects, and has in fact just sparked a violent response from one of the participants. The graduate students are all very different from each other in background, circumstances and personality, so some of them do not get along with each other very well. All of them have histories that they have not shared with each other. The arrival of a new team member, with a prickly personality and a directive to provide legal counsel and keep the group on an ethical track, sets everyone's nerves on edge. Shockingly, one of the graduate students is violently murdered in Joe's office after-hours. The local detective, Alana Larson, teams up with Officer Patrick King to solve the murder.

I found this novel a little slow to start, but once it began to pick up the pace I had trouble putting it down. I quite enjoyed the small college town setting and the enclosed little world of university academia, along with the exploration of the students' characters. The partnership of Larson and King was especially enjoyable. I had difficulty wrapping my head around the experiment/study and how it was supposed to examine lying and deceptive behaviour, not that it was critical to the plot, but it bothered me that it didn't make sense to me. The reader is able to anticipate the identity of the murderer, but it takes some time to get to the bottom of the mystery of why. I think I would have preferred a different character to be the murderer. I can't explain why without spoilers, but I think I would have been more satisfied with a different murderer. Ultimately, the novel checks some of the boxes but not all. It is a very solid debut mystery novel however, so thanks to Sourcebooks Landmark for the copy to read.