Security: A Novel

The Story

There isn't much crime in Stoneleigh, Massachusetts. It's a college town, a mountain getaway for the quietly rich, where the average burglar alarm is set off by foraging wildlife. So when Edward Inman, the owner of Stoneleigh Sentinel, gets a latenight false alarm from the home of Doyle Cutler, one of his wealthiest clients, Edward thinks nothing of it--not until a local student, Mary Steckl, claims that she was sexually assaulted at Cutler's house. Edward soon finds himself drawn to Mary's story, even though the rest of the town doubts her, including his wife, a rising politician who has made security the platform of her mayoral campaign. While homework from a creative writing class is leaked as evidence of a dark secret between Mary and her father, Edward's investigations lead him to his old girlfriend, Kathryn Williams, whose teenage son may hold the key to the truth about that night. From the author of 'Human Capital,' 'Security' is a timely, wry, and riveting story of adults and children, secret lives and civicculture, suspicion and sexual hysteria. It confirms Stephen Amidon as a master of the art and one of the foremost chroniclers of American life today.