Of course, there are a few changes. Yes, widowed anthropologist Harry Lancaster, homebound with a fractured hip, starts out by accepting a gift of high-priced binoculars from his daughter, Ceci, a State Department employee stationed in Delhi. And he depends on his home caregiver, Emma Stockton, for help above and beyond. But when his neighbor Sue Daniels is poisoned with death camas, a plant that looks like wild onion, suspicion is spread over all of Lakeview Estates, a development outside of Columbus. The neighborhood’s principal suspects—retired executive Gautam Patel and his wife, Sakshi; glamorous boutique owner Rachel Valucci; trucking company owner Milo Czesiak; retired chef Jimmy Chatimont; accountant Jack Buchanan, whose teenage son, Conner, Harry sees tossed from a moving car; and local government zoner and planner David Dubois—are hiding so many secrets that by the time Emma, who plays a much more active role than her counterpart in Alfred Hitchcock’s film, muses, “Maybe Sue was blackmailing the entire lane,” her supposition seems more likely than not. First-timer Cullen tosses in two more violent attacks, some late-blooming references to a series of other classic movies, a rushed engagement between Emma and surgeon Blake Derrickson, whom she’s known since childhood without ever really knowing, and a spirited neighborhood debate over installing security cameras that reveals how sharply the denizens of Lakeview Estates are divided against each other on the topic of communal security versus anti-surveillance paranoia. Wonder what those holdouts might be hiding?
