Before 9/11 was the fire at Triangle

There are some unresolved mysteries about Esther's account of the fire – inconsistencies that have been noted over the years – and no one is hotter to unravel these than our pushy friend the feminist academic (whose tome "Gendered Space in the Workplace, Past, Present and Future" sounds as tedious as its author).

But even as Zion irks Rebecca and George, she manages to intrigue them: Why isn't Esther's story entirely consistent? Is she concealing something that happened that day?

Readers of Weber's earlier novels (including "The Little Women," "Objects in the Mirror Are Closer Than They Appear," and "The Music Lesson") will find much that is familiar in "Triangle" (including a character – Patricia Dolan from "The Music Lesson" makes a cameo appearance here).

Weber excels at a kind of fully realized, three-dimensional fiction. Her characters live, breathe, and inhabit very convincing spaces. When gravel squeaks under their feet as they walk, we hear it. When they banter about where to have dinner, we almost hope to come along.

Weber's prose also has a pleasing economy and elegance and the devices by which "Triangle" cuts from present to past are never less than deft and surefooted.

But the book is sometimes just a bit too clever for its own good. The characters in "Triangle" do a lot of talking about patterns, particularly in relation to George's music. Such conversation is clearly linked to Esther's testimony – a symphony with minor variations that a careful reader needs to attend to – but it all becomes a bit self-conscious and detached, to the point that it takes some of the juice out of the story.

"Triangle" is neatly plotted and embedded with sufficient clues to allow a diligent reader to unravel most of Esther's mystery far too easily. But when the denouement does arrive, there's just not quite enough "there" there.

And yet, "Triangle" remains highly readable and even rather haunting. Weber's own connection to the Triangle factory is more than just theoretical – her grandmother worked there before the fire. Setting a fictional investigation of the tragedy at Triangle in a post-9/11 New York gives the retelling of those events an urgency that it would be hard to otherwise achieve. To borrow from Weber herself, "Triangle" serves to remind us that the events of the past are often closer than they appear.

• Marjorie Kehe is the Monitor's book editor. Send comments toMarjorie Kehe.

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