The Sorority Murder

The Sorority Murder is the first book in Allison Brennan's Regan Merritt series. Lucas Vega is a senior at Northern Arizona University who cannot let go of the death of Candace Swain, a sorority member found dead three years earlier in a case that was never solved. He builds a true-crime podcast around it, laying out what is known and asking listeners to call in with what they remember.

The tips arrive, and they contradict each other and the official record. Regan Merritt, a former US Marshal who has returned to Flagstaff after a personal loss, hears the podcast and recognizes that Lucas is provoking someone who has spent three years not being found. She joins him, and the two work back through a campus's worth of protected reputations.

Brennan uses the podcast format to structure the investigation, and the book doubles as a dark-academia mystery about what a university and a sorority will bury to look untroubled.