At a small New England college, two coeds go missing and are later discovered in the system of tunnels below the school as part of ritualistic sacrifices. FBI Special Agent Kelly Jones (an alumna of the college) and her partner, Morrow, are called in to investigate the crimes and find the killer before he kills again. The father of one of the girls has also hired his own investigator, Jake Riley. Together the three are racing against time to try to put together the puzzle pieces and figure out the significance behind the rituals in an effort to keep any other coeds from suffering the same fate.
Michelle Gagnon has written a wonderfully fast paced debut novel that will keep you guessing until the last page is turned.

This story is not a new one. Our unfortunate protagonist stumbles across something he shouldn't, makes a few bad decisions, and finds himself on the run with some very bad guys after him. The thing that sets this one apart is McCarthy's willingness to follow the story to it's logical conclusion without being afraid to kill off a likable character or the need to wrap everything up in a happy ending. I find Cormac McCarthy books very fast reads for me because I get hooked by the story and this book was no exception.

Playing with the Grownups is a GenX coming-of-age story told from the point of view of Kitty, a child born to an unmarried high school student who had an affair with a married man. This story is as much the story of Kitty's coming-of-age as it is a story of the coming-of-age of her mother, Marina. The story is told as a series of flashbacks Kitty has while traveling back to England to visit her hospitalized mother. Even outside of the flashback convention, the flow of the story tends to get a bit choppy and comes off reading less as a progressive accounting of Kitty's rather unconventional life and more like a series of snapshot-like short stories.
The setting of the story moves back and forth between America and England as Marina desperately tries on a variety of widely different lifestyles trying to find the one that's a good fit for her - usually dragging her 3 children and a live-in nanny along with her - with the expected results.
On a personal level, I found that I had quite a bit of trouble connecting with any of the characters. At that point the story became basically a trite laundry list of bad things that could happen to any under-supervised teenage girl.