A Flaw in the Design

Gil has been estranged from his sister ever since her obnoxious son tried to drown his daughter on a family holiday. That's Gil's interpretation; his sister thinks it was just a youthful game. Or did. When she and her husband die in a car crash, Gil becomes his nephew's legal guardian. Matthew is now an urbane 17-year-old prodigy, who has grown up in Manhattan's Upper East Side, a planet away from rural Vermont, where Gil lives with his wife and daughters and teaches at the local university. Matthew has changed. Surely. The women in Gil's life are impressed by his intelligence and charm. Matthew enrols in the university and begins to take Gil's writing classes, where the first story he submits for workshop describes the various ways a young woman resembling Gil's youngest daughter might be murdered. Gil can see clearly that he has invited a psychopath to live under his roof. But he is the only one who can. Is he losing his mind, or are his family in desperate danger.