The Initial Insult

Tress Montor was once part of a family that meant something in her town. Seven years ago her parents vanished while driving her best friend home, and since then the town has shunned her. She lives with her drunken, one-eyed grandfather at a place locals call the White Trash Zoo.

Felicity Turnado is the best friend who was in the car that night. She is pretty, wealthy and popular, and she has worked hard to make everyone forget she was with the Montors. She has buried what she knows so deeply that she cannot recall it. She only knows that she cannot look at Tress without shame and guilt.

Tress has a plan. At a Halloween costume party in an abandoned house, she intends to get the truth out of Felicity by sealing her into a coal chute, brick by brick. She wants answers, and if she cannot have them, she will settle for revenge.

This is a dark mystery for young adult readers, told in alternating points of view. Tress narrates her hunt for the truth, and Felicity is an unreliable narrator who cannot trust her own memory.

The plot draws on Edgar Allan Poe's "The Cask of Amontillado". The setting is a small town called Amontillado, where everyone has a history and something to hide. It is the first book of a duology, and the pace is driven by the party and the slowly rising wall.