well-liked English teacher at the nearby Langhorne Academy, who had been missing for several days. Based on the condition of the body, the police at first cannot conclusively determine whether Fox’s death was an accident or a murder.

After establishing the circumstances of Fox’s death, the rest of the book resembles a true-crime documentary. The author traces Fox’s career from his first teaching job in 2005. Fox, then known as Frank Farrell, had to leave a position at another private school after one of his students committed suicide. Farrell then changed his name to Fox and taught at several schools before landing at Langhorne. Fox was an expert at manipulating women, both young and old. The book shows how he groomed likely targets among his students. It also shows how he charmed older women into serving as references for him as he hopped from one school to another. The author’s writing style is repetitive, yet compelling. I was thoroughly repelled by what Fox did, but also compelled by a particular fascination to follow him.

In the book’s biggest irony, Fox had a sterling reputation in the Langhorne community as a popular, well-liked teacher. However, once the police discovered a website Fox maintained called “Sleeping Beauties 2013,” with compromising photos of some of his students, they were under no similar illusions. Fox then became a murder investigation with no shortage of suspects, including parents of some of Fox’s students who might have become furious if they discovered the truth about the English teacher. The author compounds the mystery by placing several characters close to the location of Fox’s body near the time of his death.

Joyce Carol Oates has been writing mysteries and suspense novels for over 60 years, and she hasn’t lost her touch. Fox is a good murder mystery with no shortage of suspects for readers, if not necessarily for the police. The last chapters reveal the complete circumstances of Fox’s death and provide a chilling ultimate irony. In a darkly humorous touch, the author herself makes a cameo appearance as the faculty advisor at Princeton University in 2022 for one of Fox’s students, now in college.

Although the author’s treatment of the murder investigation is well done and interesting, Fox loses much of its intensity once the title character dies. The author can’t continue to describe his thoughts and actions and must shift the story’s focus to the various police and suspects. And as with many other true crime documentaries, studying relatively normal people with understandable, even sympathetic, thought processes and emotions isn’t as interesting as exploring the thoughts and deeds of a monster like Francis Fox. His death leaves an emotional void in the story that the author can’t overcome. (The author also leaves the fate of another major character in the book unexplained, an oversight I found annoying.)

Fox is not a page-turner. The book is over 600 pages long, and I had to put it down several times because of its overall creepiness and the emotions it engendered. But Fox is also compelling; I had to go back again and again to find out what happened. When I finished the book, I was somewhat ashamed of myself, but also glad to have been in the grasp of a talented writer. I doubt Fox will make anyone’s list of favorite books, but it’s one of the best-written novels of the year.     

NOTE: The publisher graciously provided me with a copy of this book through NetGalley. However, the decision to review the book and the contents of this review are entirely my own.