On a Clear Day I Can Read Forever

The crime’s the thing — and so’s the cover-up — in M.L. Rio’s audaciously entertaining If We Were Villains (Flatiron Books, digital galley). Imagine Donna Tartt’s The Secret History set at an elite arts conservatory in Illinois, where the acting students are obsessed with all things Shakespeare. By the fall of 1997, the seven fourth-year students — all bright, young things — know each other so well they can predict who will play what roles in an upcoming production of Julius Caesar. What they cannot predict is that their onstage parts soon will spill over into real life: lovers will fight one another, friends will betray friends, someone will end up dead.

But I’m getting ahead of myself. First-time author and former actor Rio structures her literary thriller like a five-act Shakespearean drama, beginning with a prologue as former student Oliver Marks is released from prison after serving 10 years for murder. Waiting for him is the retired detective who initially worked the case and who wants to hear what really happened after the cast party a decade ago. Oliver then unfolds in flashback a story of love and friendship, obsession and deceit, with passions and secrets worthy of a Shakespearean tragedy.

For theater nerds and Shakespeare fans, the book is enthralling. An account of the three witches scene from Macbeth staged lakeside on Halloween night offers midnight magic. A production of King Lear features a set of mirrors reflecting the constellations of the night sky. Still, Rio is so well-versed in the plays that the students often speak to each other in pertinent quotes, and there’s no stopping for footnotes. Here’s Henry V, Pericles, A Winter’s Tale, Troilus and Cressida. One moment leading man Richard is spouting  “How many fond fools serve mad jealousy” from A Comedy of Errors, and in the next, seductive Meredith is running to the lake proclaiming “How sweet the moonlight sleeps upon this bank” from The Merchant of Venice.

It’s a credit to Rio’s writing style that these bits of poetry and prose enhance the narrative for the most part, that it seems normal for Oliver to think of Hamlet upon the discovery of a classmate’s body. These kids live and breathe Shakespeare, and all the world’s their stage. “One sin, I know, another doth provoke; Murder’s as near to lust as flame to smoke.”