I picked this book up by mistake a couple of weeks ago, so I thought I would give it a try and got hooked. It begins with a young college student, George Becket, in Palm Beach, FL, with his wealthy college roommate. They both get invited to a Senator's home and there the story begins. George, middle class, in awe of the wealth and privilege parading about the house, follows a couple of college guys, the Gregory boys (also wealthy blue bloods from Cape Cod), upstairs to a bedroom. They have plans for a drunk young lady, Kendrick Powell, also daughter of a fabulously rich father. The Gregory's, take advantage of her drunkenness, rape and ravage her in front of a befuddled, innocent, and meek George, too shocked and scared to do anything until the last moment, when he pulls the younger of the two Gregory's off of her. George helps Kendrick get dressed, walks her through the party and out to her car, and she drives off and George thinks that's it. Not quite.
We jump ahead a few years and George gets a job after law school as an Assistant DA on Cape Cod. He learns of a cold case, an unsolved murder of a young woman, Heidi Telford, from Heidi's father. And George becomes more interested when the father suggests the perpetrator was a Gregory, the same Gregory's who raped Kendrick Powell. Coincidence or chance? George at first refuses to pursue it but then becomes interested, and the rest of the novel follows him as he looks for various leads, leading him closer to the truth, to what he has known all along. Both families, the Gregory's and the Powell's take interest in George, for different reasons obviously and hire 'people' to keep an eye on him, making sure he doesn't make trouble.
It becomes too complicated to explain but by the end, no one gets much satisfaction although George is reconciled to the power of privilege, to how the rich are different from the rest of us...they have more money, more padding as it were, to protect them. George ends up happy, however, having found Barbara, heir to another fortune who has taken a liking to him. She runs a not very successful law office at the end and lives with George and her two sons. Even though no one has been found guilty of either the rape or murder, George is finally at peace. A decent but not great book because we get sick of George after awhile, his self pity, and refusal to take a stand until the very end.
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