The characters in Will Lavender’s suspense novel Dominance are former students from Jasper College where in 1994 they attended one of the most unusual classes ever convened: Unraveling a Literary Mystery, taught by a convicted murderer from prison via videoconference. In 2009 they gather again to attend the funeral of one of their classmates, victim of a murder that mimics the slayings that put their former professor behind bars. The students, now in their mid-thirties and scattered from California to New England, arrive at the crumbling mansion of their former dean at Jasper to comfort one another and reminisce about the deceased. But soon it seems some of them have more complicated motives.

            Lavender’s setting on this chilly, damp Vermont college campus provides an appropriately gloomy atmosphere for the ensuing mystery of who killed Michael Tanner – and for the reopened mystery of who was really responsible for the 1982 murders of two of Professor Richard Aldiss’s students that landed the professor in prison. The book begins with the first meeting of Aldiss’s night class: “Just after dark they rolled in the television where the murderer would appear. . . wearing a simple orange jumpsuit, the number that identified him barely hidden beneath the bottom edge of the screen. The V of his collar dipped low to reveal the curved edge of a faded tattoo just over his heart. Although the students did not yet know this, the tattoo was of the thumb-shaped edge of a jigsaw puzzle piece.” Aldiss’s tattoo reflects a central theme of Dominance; the book explores the puzzle of the students’ murders, but it is itself also a puzzle for the reader to piece together, with short chapters that jump frequently from the period of that 1994 night class to the reunion of the remaining class members 15 years later. Lavender adds or subtracts clues with each move, skillfully keeping us wondering. What, for instance, is the significance of  Aldiss’s puzzle tattoo? What is “the Procedure” and what is so menacing about it? We must keep reading to find out.

            The first shift to 2009 introduces us to Alex Shipley, a night class student on a visit to Aldiss at his home near the Jasper College campus to glean his insights into Tanner’s murder. The reader follows Alex through the novel as she tries to solve the two puzzles: as a promising young Jasper English student, she becomes engrossed in the search for evidence that will exonerate her professor after finding a declaration of his innocence concealed in a library book; as a returning alumna – now a popular professor of English at Harvard University – she searches for the killer of her own former classmate. Although her previous investigations cleared him of the 1982 murders and secured his release from prison, Alex fears Aldiss, an egotistical, controlling man who seems to enjoy demeaning her. Plainly, she has a large stake in his being the innocent man she professes him to be, but who is he really? Despite the evidence she uncovered, not everyone believes in his innocence, and she struggles with her own doubts in the wake of Tanner’s murder. As she interviews her brilliant former professor for advice about catching Tanner’s killer, she entertains private suspicions that she cannot admit. Aldiss gives her a lead to follow, but it proves almost as painful as the possibility that Aldiss himself could be responsible: “bring the students from the class back together . . . and when you have done this, when they are back on the Jasper campus, then you will observe them. That is how you will find the one who committed this murder.”

            And so Alex can trust no one, not even her first love, one of the night class students who returns to Jasper for Michael Tanner’s funeral. Jacob Keller’s presence rekindles Alex’s attraction to him, but she cannot set aside her suspicions, even with him. She believes he has stolen a missing Fallows manuscript that’s rumored to be hidden in the dean’s house. Paul Fallows, a reclusive novelist who penned two influential works and then disappeared, was the subject of the night class. His true identity was the mystery Aldiss’s students were asked to unravel. Cryptic clues led Alex and Keller to understand that somehow Fallows’ identity connected to the 1982 student murders and that finding Fallows would also mean finding the true killer. In their search for Fallows, they followed in the footsteps of countless obsessed scholars who spent their careers scouring the novels for evidence of the elusive author.

            In leading us through the maze of clues, Lavender never lets us get comfortable, does not allow us to accept the words or actions of his characters at face value. During Alex’s first visit to Aldiss, he explains to her a rare puzzle called a cyndrot. To her frustrated query “What does this have to do with Michael Tanner?” he replies “Perhaps nothing, Alexandra. Or perhaps it is heavy with meaning.” We are left to wonder, as Alex does, which it is. As readers, we experience Dominance the way its characters experience the novels of Paul Fallows: following a heroine who seems to be wandering in a labyrinth, trying to piece together the meanings to reveal a story behind, or beyond, the story on the surface. If you enjoy puzzling twists and turns, and suspense that doesn’t let up even on the last page, you should delve into Dominance.

            Will Lavender, New York Times and international bestselling author of Obedience, will speak at the Warren County Public Library, 1225 State Street, at 6 p.m. on Thursday, November 17. Free tickets for this event are available at all WCPL locations or by e-mail (jaynep@warrenpl.org). Books will be available for purchase.

Dominance by Will Lavender. New York: Simon & Schuster, 2011. 353 pages, $25.00 (hardcover).