It was Anthony's sixtieth birthday and his wife Olivia, known for her extravagant soirees, outdid herself. The party was held at The Gables, their mega-country house in the Cotswolds, that boasted its own man-made pond towards the rear of the estate. Decorating the outdoors with hundreds of torches just wasn't enough of a statement to match Anthony's outsized personality (or his magic touch for accumulating other people's money) so Olivia went one further-she had workers sink large orbs of light into the pond, held in place with stakes. The effect at night was mesmerizing only topped when, after drinking enough for an army, Anthony was found impaled and dead on one of the stakes. And everyone at the party was a suspect.
After Anthony's death, the police rule the incident an accident-but at least one budding true crime podcaster knows that there is more to this. As we then find out, his youngest daughter agrees with her, and she proceeds to drive Olive crazy with her theories. Their two older daughters and son don't really care if a crime was committed, as long as they get their share of dad's considerable loot. What they don't know is that Anthony, bored with the ease of using his hedge fund to accumulate vast wealth, has implemented a Ponzi Scheme just to make it more fun for himself, which was going to be revealed by investigators the day after the party. Turns out that Olivia also had a plan, she had been poaching from the household fund and banking it offshore for years, planning her escape from the marriage...but now she can't reveal her slush fund or it will go to pay off Anthony's victims. The whole debacle is such a trial for the poor formally wealthy family!
Meanwhile, in a purgatory-like building somewhere, Anthony is assigned a cot in a large dormitory and is read the riot act. He is dead and to ascend the next plane, he must remember the exact circumstances of his demise and report it to the building supervisor. He will be aided in this through optional meditation classes (which he declines, of course) and by using a laptop to monitor his family, who hopefully will drop clues about his death so that he can leave for the new "life" that he knows will be his. Unfortunately, he finds out that no one in his family is telling the truth about anything.
The reader gets the story of Anthony's life and death from the perspective of every family member, as Anthony watches the action from his tiny cubicle somewhere in the great beyond. They are all deliciously bad and it's absolutely enjoyable to track the lengths of evil behavior each will stoop to, in search of the big monetary prize. So how DID Anthony die and who is responsible? I bet you'll be wrong.
No comments:
Post a Comment