The ruling class by Jennifer Lynn Barnes

Previously published as The Fixer, The ruling class has stood the test of time and is a suspenseful thriller that kept me glued to the page. Tess Kendrick is trying to hide the fact that her grandfather has dementia. She is keeping up appearances at school, while managing the ranch, but when her older sister Ivy finds out, she is taken to Washington, D.C. and her grandfather put into care facility. Enrolled at the prestigious Hardwicke School, Tess discovers that Ivy has a reputation as a fixer who can make powerful people’s problems disappear. Her fellow students expect her to solve their problems and she is thrust into a dangerous world of politics, murder and manipulation when her new friends at the school become part of a scandal that reaches Capitol Hill.

I raced through The ruling class and finished it in a couple of sittings. Set against a background of an elite school where the children of the very powerful rule, it is fascinating to follow Tess as she negotiates her way through the pitfalls of the school hierarchy. Although Ivy orders her to keep out of the investigation into the death of a high court judge, her loyalty to her friend Evvie, sees her embroiled in finding out what has happened. Barnes paints a convincing world of politics and fixers who manipulate the press and clean up scandals and the reader is left wondering what powerful men are willing to murder to have their political candidate appointed as Chief Justice.

This is an action-packed story with characters that the reader will be eager to meet again in Lessons in power, the next in the series.

Themes: Thriller, Murder, Politics, Washington D.C..

Pat Pledger