Rufus Holt lives in suburban Vermont, but his life is no ice-cream-and-pie suburban fantasy. It’s more of a nightmare. He’s gay in a small town, house-on-the-brink-of-foreclosure poor and the illegitimate son of a sociopathic lawyer hellbent on his demise. And that’s all before Rufus finds his half-sister passed out in her dead lover’s arms with a bloody butcher knife dangling from her sleepy grip.
Caleb Roehrig’s White Rabbit is a murder mystery set in a suburban enclave so twisted it’s almost dystopian. Rufus lives in a town where the cool kids aren’t just spoiled narcissists, they’re grade-A psychopaths. There are drug dealers, rapists and at least one murderer. While the more sordid details are left to the reader’s imagination, the plot of White Rabbit is violent and twisted enough for a Quentin Tarantino screenplay. But White Rabbit’s not all malice and malcontents. Woven throughout the mystery is the on-again, off-again love story of Rufus and his boyfriend, Sebastian—an endearing thread that highlights the drama of coming to understand and embrace one’s sexuality.
Though Roehrig’s plotting is tight and his handling of the love story deft, his ear for the modern vernacular may be his most subtle gift. In a book with a massive body count, his dialogue is dead on. Though too dark and violent for some, White Rabbit will certainly appeal to teen readers on the more mature end of the spectrum.
