As one of the Lighthouse children growing up in the “Murder Mansion,” Dahlia didn’t have a normal education. Each of the kids were named for the victims of a crime—Charlie, for the Lindbergh baby; Tate, for Sharon Tate; Andy, for Lizzie Bordon’s father; and Dahlia, for the Black Dahlia. Their mother, whose parents were murdered, had sold her family home and her parents’ gun manufacturing company, and moved into their summer house on Blackburn Island.
The kids were homeschooled, with extra lessons in true crime. They watched documentaries and read newspaper accounts. They wrote reports and watched as their mother acted out the deaths. They held honoring rituals for the victims, to honor those who died tragically and violently. They studied the island’s own serial killer, the Blackburn Killer. And when they turned 18, they were given a trust fund and were allowed to leave home.
Charlie, the oldest, left as soon as he could, making his way to be an actor in New York City. Tate, just one year younger, joined him in New York when she turned 18, becoming an artist of true crime dioramas and an Instagram star. Twins Andy and Dahlia, almost 10 years younger, were still at home while their siblings were gone. After Charlie and Tate left, they only came back for the twins’ sixteenth birthday.
Then the next day, Andy was gone.
There was a note. Everyone thought he ran away. But Dahlia thought he’d come back. She waited at home until she was 19, to see if he’d show back up. And when she did leave, she didn’t go far from the island. She found a small apartment over a café and searched the internet for any sign of him, looking at one city after another.
Now she’s 26, and their father has died. All the Lighthouse siblings are planning to go back for the funeral. Except for Andy, who doesn’t show up. Until their groundskeeper digs the grave for their father in the family plot and finds that there is already someone buried there. The police determine that it’s Andy buried there, with the ax that killed him. He’s been there since he went missing on his birthday night. But who put him there, and why?
For having been literally schooled in true crime, Dahlia can’t even process who might have killed her brother. Charlie has decided to give the islanders what they want, and is planning on opening their house for one day as the Lighthouse Memorial Museum. Tate is processing her grief the only way she knows how, by creating a diorama of Andy’s death Their mother is baking cookies to comfort her children, something she had never done before, but now she is burning batch after batch, trying to get them just right. And Dahlia is working on her own investigation, trying to figure out who had a reason to kill Andy.
But as she investigates, she realizes that there was a lot more going on for Andy than he ever told her about, and as the truth comes out, she wonders if she knew him at all.
Megan Collins’ The Family Plot is a powerful thriller that looks at the current obsession with true crime and how looking so closely at the darkness can change our perception of what’s true. The secrets that these family members kept from each other left them isolated and alone, while the islanders and tourists turned them into a carnival side show.
I’ll be honest. I’m into true crime. I have my podcasts. I watch some of the documentaries. And I do worry about what that says about me, and about a culture that gets to much entertainment out of this darkness. Family Plot takes that idea to the extreme, focusing on the darkness and how, unchecked, it can get in and destroy you. But it also shows the better parts of the human spirit—the love, the compassion, the ability to start anew and to heal and to find happiness again.
In this story, to get to the good stuff, you have to get through a lot of darkness first. The Family Plot is a unique look at the thriller genre, a clever way to face the true crime captivation, but Collins keeps the characters interesting and empathetic. I did struggle with some of the darkness in this novel as well as some of the family dynamics, but I can’t fault her for her creativity. This is a truly unique family, and The Family Plot is a true original in domestic thrillers.
Egalleys for The Family Plot were provided by Atria Books through NetGalley, with many thanks.
