The Playroom

Victoria Louise is glamorous, svelte, seductive and malevolent. She is returning to her former family home near Boston to wreak terrible revenge on a clique of popular high-school students who humiliated her at a disastrous sweet-16 party held in the family playroom almost a decade earlier. There is no chance that anyone in the old group will recognize Victoria. She has changed her name and has lost 99 pounds; extensive plastic surgery and a new personality have erased the last links to her old self. Her plan begins to work swiftly and without hitches. One by one, members of the group vanish, causing consternation among their friends, apathy in the inadequate police department and joy to Victoria, who has, by one ruse or another, lured them to her home where they are now manacled and drugged in the wine cellar. Rusty Erlich, another former member of the group who has been hired by Victoria to remodel the playroom, does not become suspicious even when Victoria asks him to install heavy doors with secure locks, add sound-proofing and brick up the windows. As he and his sprightly girlfriend Rae decide to trace their friends, Victoria moves ahead for a macabre party in the new playroom. Speedy, direct and engrossing, this suspense novel is in the same diabolical vein as the author's Bloodties and Nightshade.