Passion Play: A Novel

Set in the insular, genteel world of an all-boys prep school, this tense and electrifying Edgar-nominated classic surrounding an all-too-deadly production of Othello is now back in print.

In New York City, a young man is found murdered in a dingy Times Square sex theater—his neck gruesomely snapped—and the only clue is a torn receipt from the Montpelier School for Boys bookstore.

Christmas break is just a couple of weeks away when Montpelier student Russell Phillips fetches up dead. Headmaster Lane, preferring to view Phillips’s death as a suicide, decides to keep the school open for the remainder of the term. But as the nights grow longer and colder—and more corpses begin to surface in connection with the rehearsals for Othello, the winter play—it becomes all too clear that the students and faculty are being stalked by a cool and calculating killer.

The local police and school administrators find themselves out of their depth. Even so, many people’s suspicions begin to focus on a single suspect—until he, too, turns up dead.

A gripping tour de force that brilliantly uses an isolated boarding school campus as the setting for this propulsive mystery, Passion Play will keep the reader guessing until the final act.