The Snow Garden by Christopher Rice

Son of the bewitching Anne Rice, the author follows his first novel, A Density of Souls, with a second that is just as rife with murder, fear, madness, and homoeroticism. Unfortunately, it is also a histrionic hodgepodge, all set on a snowbound college campus in the Northeast. Respected Atherton University professor Eric Eberman seems devastated when his wife, Lisa, drives her Volvo into the icy Atherton River and drowns. Was it a drunken accident or suicide? This question and many more erupt into scandal when the small university town discovers that Professor Eberman has been sleeping with one of his male students, Randall Stone. Randall comes to suspect that Lisa's death was not accidental, and subsequently he and his tightly knit group of college friends go through tremendous amounts of angst, haunted by sexual desires and obscure fears and just generally all worked up.

Yeah, I dunno hey. It all get's a little bit more entertaining towards the end ... although it still ends up feeling like a plot which is trying to be too much, to tell too many stories and which ends up not doing justice to any of them. Essentially it just didn't end up believable ... are there really that many messed up people living is such a confined space?! I dunno, it ended up being about as believable as Season of the Witch for me ... (which is not very!)