The cave dwellers A novel

A wealthy, influential couple and their teenage daughter are ambushed, tortured, and murdered in their Georgetown mansion before the stately home is set on fire. The brutal crime upends the tight-knit Washington, DC, enclave in which politicians rub elbows with media moguls and cabinet secretaries hobnob with corporate titans. While the deaths of Genevieve and David Banks titillate their social circle, the murder of young Audrey captivates her own peer group, a snooty, privileged little cabal of students at a tony private academy. When a Black man is charged with the murders, only classmate Bunny Bartholomew is willing to risk her reputation and security in a sincere but misguided attempt to see that justice is done. McDowell, who was born in DC to a prominent securities attorney who was later imprisoned for financial crimes, uses her first-hand knowledge of this competitive milieu to capture its obsession with status with a deftly ironic flair while subtly probing sobering themes of white supremacy, political corruption, elitist privilege, old money, and new influence. Through blunt caricatures and sharp characterizations, McDowell archly demonstrates her disdain for the superficiality of such an existence and combines social satire with moral outrage to offer a masterfully crafted, absorbing read that can simply entertain on one level and provoke reasoned discourse on another.

McDowell's mordant debut novel (following the memoir After Perfect) sends up the Washington, D.C., establishment. The torture and murder of Texas oil scion David Banks and his family sets off shock waves among teenage daughter Audrey's classmates and their families. Bunny Bartholomew's industrialist father is being sued for dumping chemicals, and her callous, blue-blooded mother wonders if the Banks murders were "divine intervention" after their new money made them social competitors with the Bartholomews. The son of an Army general who's under investigation for his role in alleged war crimes lets himself be waterboarded with champagne (and filmed) at a party, while elsewhere a senator chases off his daughter's Black boyfriend with a gun after catching them naked together, also captured on camera. Meanwhile, Bunny begins visiting the man charged with the murders, former Banks employee Anthony Tell, who is Black, claims his innocence, and is held without bail. As Bunny becomes overwhelmed by guilt about her white privilege, her effort to help Anthony and uncover the truth adds to the conflagration threatening to bring down all the families. While the drama is thick, the characters all hew closely to type (and to one another), with mothers bedecked in diamonds and Hermès scarves, and the fathers largely only distinguishable from one another by their professions and crimes. The flat characterizations don't make for high literature, but the satire cuts deep. (May)