Book World: A bizarre, arresting mystery you won t be able to put down
Joan Frank, The Washington Post
March 9, 2021
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By Sara Davis
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Is The Scapegoat, Sara Davis debut novel, in fact a propulsive and destabilizing literary mystery, per its back-cover blurb? It is - and then some. Reading this bizarre, arresting tale, you may not always feel clear about what you are tracking - but you ll absolutely want to track it.
The novel s power and steady control manifest in its voice: that of an eerily inward, single male, perhaps in his 30s, who lives monkishly, working at a Stanford-like university in a fog-veiled setting (California s Bay Area). From the start this nameless narrator exudes shyness, loneliness and social ineptitude; monotony makes him hyper-watchful. But soon his observations begin to disturb and puzzle us. When a colleague named Kirstie (presumably youngish and attractive, though it s never stated) enters the department s break room afte