The Clinic

Meg works a casino floor in Los Angeles catching cheats, a job she manages with alcohol and pills. Her sister Haley was a famous singer, and the two had not spoken in years when Haley died during a stay at an exclusive rehab clinic on a remote stretch of the Oregon coast. The verdict is suicide. Meg does not believe it.

She checks in under a false name. The clinic is small, expensive, and full of people with reasons to lie: six patients, a staff that controls every door, and a manager, Cara, who has her own account of what happened. Cut off from the outside, detoxing, and increasingly unsure of her own perceptions, Meg starts working the room the way she works a casino — watching for the tell.

Cate Quinn's The Clinic is a locked-room thriller about addiction, celebrity, and the ugly economics of getting well. It alternates between Meg and Cara, and it is at its sharpest on what wealth buys and what it hides.