This time it’s not Lewis Carroll’s Alice but 26-year-old old Theodora (Teddy) Angstrom who plummets headlong into first-time novelist Kate Brody’s propulsive social media–infused literary thriller, “Rabbit Hole.” Brody hits the ground running with an immediately absorbing double whammy of an opening sentence: “Ten years to the day after my sister’s disappearance, my father kills himself.”

From there, you won’t be able to put the novel down until its equally startling closing words.

Teddy teaches English at a prestigious prep school on the atmospheric Maine coast. One of her favorite reading selections is “The Dead,” the final short story in James Joyce’s collection, “The Dubliners.” She connects the dismal snow that covers everything in Joyce’s story to Maine’s “ceaseless rain.” It lends a kind of “paralysis” to her emotional state, increasing her own grief and depression over her lost sibling and parent and sending her into a tailspin of angst and paranoia. Her state of mind makes her a prime candidate for the addictive “depersonalization” of the online conspiratorial doxxing community of Reddit.

Teddy becomes progressively immersed in the dangerous platform as she tries to sort out the unsolved case of her missing older sister, Angie, and the probable reasons for her father, Mark, taking his own life, driving “his car through the rotting barn wall of the most beautiful bridge in town,” one of only nine covered bridges left in the state. Is there a connection between the two events a decade apart? Could Mark have killed Angie?

Teddy is not the only person obsessed with finding answers to those questions. A text thread on the platform – r/Unsolved Mysteries – includes speculation from cornelonthecob09 (“the burner phone to me points to a runaway situation”), quad_cat (“It’s the dad”), SVUfan531 (“no boyfriend ever turned up”), and, most significantly from MICHAELA345 (“RIP MARK ANGSTROM”).

Identities on the site are hidden, blurred and sometimes false. Identifying herself only as “mg,” MICHAELA345 sends an email saying, “I knew your dad”; Teddy discovers that MICHAELA345, or “Mickey,” seems to know a great deal more than she should about Mark, Angie and Teddy. After the two women meet, they quickly become an amateur duo of sisters in sleuthing and even roommates. In fact, 19-year old Mickey looks so much like the missing Angie, she could pass as her stand-in.

The story is told from Teddy’s point of view. Her riveting narration shifts between family members, filling in facts about her sister’s early life and disappearance and the detritus of her father’s secret background, as exposed in receipts and phone records, and advancing suppositions about both of them. Did Angie, a high school rebel, run away after a party? And did she run to her half-brother’s home to hide out there as his nanny? What could have been Mark’s questionable motives in marrying his brother’s distraught widow, who eventually becomes their mother.

Rigorously fleshed-out secondary characters contribute a rich depth to the novel. Bill Rooney was in his late 20s when he did yard work for the family; Angie, at 16, saw him as “Hot Landscaping Guy.” Now the guitarist in a Dave Matthews cover band, Teddy is drawn to him, too, and their intimate relationship develops from their shared past. Celeste Starling (echoes of “Silence of the Lambs”), a psychic counselor Mark spent thousands of dollars consulting, suggests Angie is not dead. Then there’s the enigmatic, ignominious ForgetItJake, who has doxxed Teddy by releasing her personal email address, cellphone number, street address and faculty photo.

Just who is ForgetItJake? Do Brody’s repeated references to the movie “Chinatown mean anything or are they simply throwaway MacGuffin lines? (Sister, daughter; daughter, sister.) Brody slyly doles out just enough information to keep the reader turning pages until the stunning big reveal of real identities.

As Teddy delves deeper into her family’s secrets and lies, her own personal and professional life spirals out of control. Paranoia leads to heavy drinking. Sex serves as a temporary consolation. Her only trustworthy support system is the love of her pet Irish wolfhound. Even that leads to a thoughtless and dangerous incident at school that threatens her livelihood. She also begins to suspect Mickey of questionable behavior in their shared apartment.

Tension escalates to a maddening frenzy until a bombshell revelation brings the plot full circle, making “Rabbit Hole” a dazzling read from start to finish.

Robert Allen Papinchak, a former university English professor, is an award-winning book critic in the Los Angeles area.

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