When the Bergamots' fifteen-year-old son, Jake, forwards a sexually explicit video from a thirteen-year-old schoolmate on to his best friend without thinking, he ignites a firestorm that threatens to consume his family and the life they have built for themselves among the socially elite in New York City.

This sharply comic first novel kept my interest from start to finish and has often entered my thoughts months after finishing it.  The story centers on the chaotic art that performance artists Caleb and Camille Fang create along with their two children who are participants—often unwillingly—in the bedlam their parents force upon others…in shopping malls, subway stations, and various other public places.  As the novel progresses, we see how this life has affected the psyches of the Fang children.

This beautifully crafted story opens with Atkinson introducing the reader to three seemingly unrelated crimes: a missing child from thirty years ago, a murderous office rampage, and a new mother who kills her husband after a mental breakdown. Private investigator Jackson Brodie has been hired to solve the cases by the loved ones left behind who desperately need closure. While the investigations have been cold for years, Brodie slowly begins to weave together the details of each one until all three have startling revelations.