This is How We End Things

A toxic workplace implodes as Jacobs (Always the First to Die) puts deception and its fallout under the microscope. The workplace, which darkly echoes the setting of the recent Netflix series The Chair, is North Carolina’s Dorrance University, but more specifically a six-person project within its psychology department. A professor and five graduate students, who embody the worst of what happens when coworkers see one another as family, are conducting an odd experiment. They fool students into thinking they are missing credits and must participate in an (unknown to them, mock) psychology study to graduate. The real purpose of the interaction is to gauge how willing students will be to lie when under pressure. That deception is just the beginning of the lies and manipulations that emerge in this story after one of the too tightly knit group is murdered, with further violence not far behind. Jacobs succeeds wonderfully in portraying a hothouse-type atmosphere in which everyone’s a suspect and the suspicions are just the latest inspiration for backbiting, accusations, and pettiness. Readers won’t see the ending coming and will relish the red herrings and twists along the way.