The Set Up

DEBUT Las Vegas is the stage and setting for this unsettling debut mystery by sociology professor Wynn (Univ. of Massachusetts, Amherst; The Tour Guide: Walking and Talking New York). It takes place in and around Vegas’s offices, restaurant, and sidewalks—and finally, a fancy event space where college student Ally, a theater and journalism major, is dispatched to distract a wealthy developer attending his son’s bar mitzvah. Ally’s been doing this job for a week now. Her employer never calls, only texts, pays by electronic transfer. First it was product placement: posting a covert selfie, leaving a Vespa parked outside a restaurant. In Ally’s journalism class, she leaves a photocopy of her professor’s first big story on his desk: coverage of an old accidental death. This stirs doubts in his mind about what took place back then. Was it an accident, or was it murder? At the bar mitzvah, Ally sees a waitress switch drinks on the developer, who then dies of a heart attack. As this eerie novel inches forward, the professor unearths evidence of a murder 10 years earlier, while Ally uncovers a second murder today. Are they linked? What happens after is chilling, the more so because it’s so impersonal.