Where the Truth Lies

An unsolved murder haunts small-town Kentucky in this formulaic standalone from Greene (The Lake of Lost Girls). Fifteen years ago, teenager Jenn Moore was bludgeoned to death while hitchhiking out of her hometown of Fern River, leaving behind inconclusive evidence about what happened between the moment she left home and the moment she was killed. In the present, new physical evidence emerges and an eyewitness comes forward, giving police grounds to question Fern River resident Rhett Clark. Rhett’s wife, Lucy, balks at the questioning, insisting to friends and neighbors that no one should care who killed Jenn. Flashbacks reveal that Rhett was having an affair with the teenager shortly before she died, an entanglement that appears to give him and Lucy sufficient motive for murder. The truth, however, is more complicated, and Greene teases it out gradually by toggling between the night Jenn died and Rhett and Lucy’s fracturing marriage in the present. Unfortunately, clichéd prose (“The thing about secrets is that they never stayed hidden”) and familiar plot beats mar the proceedings. This falls flat. (Mar.)