{"id":4219,"date":"2025-03-27T19:28:46","date_gmt":"2025-03-27T19:28:46","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/firstcluereviews.com\/?p=4219"},"modified":"2025-04-14T19:28:55","modified_gmt":"2025-04-14T19:28:55","slug":"the-cul-de-sac","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/firstcluereviews.com\/?p=4219","title":{"rendered":"The Cul-de-sac"},"content":{"rendered":"

Only-child Eliza is not thrilled her parents are moving them from San Francisco to the suburbs, and meeting the intriguing, decidedly odd residents of their new cul-de-sac, readers will hardly blame her. There\u2019s Klaus, a German computer scientist who keeps to himself, except when he\u2019s killing women and burying them in his garden. Then Alex, who\u2019s physically disabled by kidney disease and socially by DIY haircuts, and who\u2019s reluctantly roped into tutoring Eliza in algebra\u2014he explains that he\u2019s independently wealthy and doesn\u2019t need or want the job, but her mom insists. Their neighbor Peggy tries to be friendly but is just off<\/em>. Then there\u2019s a house that\u2019s burned and remains empty, apparently for years. This lonely street is made sinister by its silence, but there\u2019s activity behind closed doors. A fledgling romance\u2014or are they just friends?\u2014sets off the central problem of the book: one neighbor is killed, others are involved in the aftermath, and the police are not letting it go, with the investigation revealing Klaus\u2019s garden of horrors. A closing twist when a neighbor does something most unexpected caps this quirky, often amusing suburban jaunt that\u2019s a must for fans of domestic suspense.<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Only-child Eliza is not thrilled her parents are moving them from San Francisco to the suburbs, and meeting the intriguing, decidedly odd residents of their new cul-de-sac, readers will hardly…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":4218,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_lmt_disableupdate":"","_lmt_disable":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[30],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4219","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-review"],"featured_image_src":"https:\/\/firstcluereviews.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/formidable\/4\/Cul-400x400.jpeg","featured_image_src_square":"https:\/\/firstcluereviews.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/formidable\/4\/Cul-400x600.jpeg","author_info":{"display_name":"Henrietta Thornton","author_link":"https:\/\/firstcluereviews.com\/?author=4"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/firstcluereviews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4219","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/firstcluereviews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/firstcluereviews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/firstcluereviews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/firstcluereviews.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4219"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/firstcluereviews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4219\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/firstcluereviews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/4218"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/firstcluereviews.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4219"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/firstcluereviews.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4219"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/firstcluereviews.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4219"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}