Every time I start a book that uses Agatha Christie’s And Then There Were None motif, I’m a little skeptical. While Stacie Grey’s She Left shows some promise, it’s a little uneven. And, I do have a complaint. The premise is that twenty years after the unsolved Memorial Day Massacre, a group of people peripherally connected to the victims are brought together. Haven’t these people ever watched a horror movie? Why in the heck would you show up to this? And, the main character is a survivor, now an FBI Special Agent. What was she thinking?

Amy Brewer was seventeen when she left the party on Memorial Day weekend, and walked home. She’d had enough abuse from the group she thought of as friends. After she left, the cabin exploded. Those that survived the bombing were then killed with a knife. Five victims, although Amy Brewer was a victim in so many ways; a victim of the media and later social media.

Twenty years later, Brewer gave up using her first name and goes by Therese Brewer. She’s an FBI agent who has spent two decades distancing herself from that night. But, when a journalist invites people who were connected with that case to come to a remote house, Therese goes. In fact, the friends and relatives who were invited do show up, but the journalist, their host, doesn’t. Instead, the next morning when they realize their cell phones and car keys are missing, one of the guests says she invited them all, and she wants to discuss the case. But, before the group can turn on her, someone beats them to it. She’s murdered, and they have no way to contact anyone from their remote location.

As a killer takes out one guest after another, Brewer realizes she’s fighting to stay alive. But, which person has that connection to the past that could have made them a killer twenty years earlier? Now, they have more deaths on their hands.

While this is a typical spin on the Christie motif, Brewer is a little different as a narrator. She herself admits she’s not a reliable witness because she’s basing so much of the story on her experiences as a seventeen-year-old. And, how reliable is a seventeen-year-old with hurt feelings and anger?

Would I recommend She Left? Only for those who can’t get enough of And Then There Were None.

Stacie Grey’s website is https://staciegrey.com/

She Left by Stacie Grey. Poisoned Pen Press/Sourcebooks, 2024. ISBN 9781464392922 (paperback), 336p.

FTC Full Disclosure – The publisher sent a copy of the book, with no promise of a review or a positive one.