Elizabeth Kelly’s The Last Summer of the Camperdowns begins quietly – the young daughter of a retired-movie-star mother and a campaigning-for-senate father lives a charmed life in a big house in Cape Cod. Roaming the estate with her basset hounds and her thoroughbred horses, Riddle James Camperdown’s (named after her father’s hero, James Riddle Hoffa) biggest problems are her mother’s lacerating sarcasm and attending her father’s endless campaign parties.
The estate next to the Camperdown’s is owned by Gin, described as both her mother’s best friend and most loathed enemy. He’s basically a big pansy – Riddle described him as always looking as if he’s in need of fanning (sort of overly dramatic, likely to faint or cry). Riddle and her mother, Greer, spend a fair bit of time at Gin’s either in the stables or in the ring training his new horses (he always seems to have a new horse). Until a European immigrant comes to work in the stables, a man named Gula Nightjar. Her parents laugh at her when Riddle mentions that she finds him a bit creepy. But oh-my-gosh he is creepy.
Here’s what’s different about The Last Summer of the Camperdowns: you know from the fifth or sixth chapter that Gula is the bad guy, that he is creepy and dangerous. And Riddle knows it too, but she doesn’t tell anybody. So even though there is a mystery, it’s only a mystery to the other characters in the novel. We know darn well what happened and who did it – because Riddle saw it. And therefore we did too. The rest of the novel alternates between the tragic events that unfold after the crime that Riddle witnesses, and her terrible struggle with the secret she is keeping. It is really very good.