The Serpent Club

Coffey covers a lot of legal and moral ground in this fast-paced, shocking and hypnotic debut thriller about a cynical journalist working for an L.A. daily who stumbles into a career-making story while investigating the brutal rape and murder of a 13-year-old girl. Ted Lowe finds himself handling a front-page case when the primary suspect turns out to be the girl's boyfriend, Brad Devlin, the adolescent son of a billionaire CEO of an electronics company who has the connections to protect his son from prosecution. Lowe uses a police source and some questionable reporting tactics to gather clues that incriminate the youth and his father, but his investigation takes a bizarre turn when Brad and his thuggish friends ""kidnap"" the reporter and force him to ride along while they rape a young girl and her mother. Lowe finds himself drawn to the violence, and his failure to report the crime becomes one of several fascinating angles that unfold as the case comes to trial. The sensationalized trial moves steadily toward an acquittal despite the evidence against Brad, leading Lowe to suspect that the father is pulling strings behind the scenes, and forcing him to choose between testifying about his own criminal behavior to help convict Brad or maintaining his silence to protect his career. Coffey, a New York Times sports editor, employs a deceptively spare, world-weary voice to slowly reveal the origins of his protagonist's emotional limbo, and he comes up with stunningly original plot twists to emphasize Lowe's excruciating moral dilemma. The cast of quirky L.A. characters helps give context to Lowe's bizarre behavior, lending color to a narrative combining the suspense of a police procedural with the moral intrigue of a legal thriller. In a genre where breaking new ground is a rare achievement, Coffey has gone far beyond the restrictions of formula to craft a remarkable debut. (June)