Dominance A Puzzle Thriller

A fast-paced literary puzzler, Dominance is "an academic mystery that gleefully illustrates the dangers of losing yourself in a book" ( The New York Times Book Review).This clever twist on the classic locked room mystery is " The Silence of the Lambs meets And Then There Were None…a terrific premise." ( Booklist). In 1994, nine students at Jasper college in Vermont were hand-picked to join a special night class taught by infamous literature professorand murdererRichard Aldiss, live from a video feed in his prison cell. Twelve years earlier, Aldiss had been convicted of the murders of two female grad students whose bodies were decorated with the novels of notoriously reclusive author Paul Fallows. Even the most obsessive Fallows scholars have never seen the man. He is like a ghost. Professor Aldiss entreated his students to solve the Fallows riddle once and for all. But there was something more at stake: Aldiss knew that the discovery of the author's true identity would exonerate him of the heinous crimes. Today, Alex Shipley is a Harvard professor who made her name as a member of the night class, and as the woman who helped set Richard Aldiss free. But when one of her fellow alums is murdered and surrounded by Fallows novels, can she use what she knows of Fallows to stop a killerbefore each of her former classmates is picked off, one by one?

Will Lavender is the author of the novel Obedience, which was translated into fourteen languages and was a New York Times bestseller. He is at work on his third novel, The Descartes Circle.