FICTION

Shadow of the Lions

by Christopher Swann
Algonquin. Aug. 2017. 368p. ISBN 9781616205003. $26.95; ebk. ISBN 9781616207670. F
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OrangeReviewStarTen years ago, Matthias Glass attended a presitigious boarding school, Blackburne, in Virginia. Near the end of his senior year in high school, his roommate and best friend Fritz Davenport disappeared. Matthias then urged his girlfriend Abby, Fritz's twin sister, to search for Fritz, but she was resigned to delay her enrollment at Juilliard and care for her distraught mother. A decade later, Matthias has had success with his first novel but failed to produce any work of substance since his literary debut. Fortuitously, as his life is about to fall apart through many bad decisions, he is offered a position to return as an English teacher at Blackburne. Then one of his students is murdered, and when the local police investigate, Matthias again seeks answers to Fritz's whereabouts.
VERDICT Swann's tightly knit debut novel is a moving coming-of-age story with a noir twist that will appeal to readers of John Knowles's A Separate Peace, N.H. Kleinbaum's Dead Poets Society, and Donna Tartt's The Secret History.
Reviewed by Russell Michalak, Goldey-Beacom Coll. Lib., Wilmington, DE , Aug 11, 2017
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