High school hysteria

At times Megan Abbott's 2014 novel The Fever reads like an amateur detective mystery, a medical thriller,  a teen romance and and even a story about witchcraft and superstition — and indeed it is all of those things.

A lovely high school girl experiences a mysterious seizure in class and is hospitalized in serious condition.  Then other girls report similar conditions, though not as severe. The rumor mill among students, parents and teachers kicks into high gear. Is it drugs? Is it the effects of a polluted nearby lake? Is it a sexually transmitted disease? Is it the HPV vaccine all the girls received? Is it some kind of supervirus? Or is it Deenie Nash, the one girl in the group who seems to be OK but has had contact with all the others?

Abbott's story focuses on Deenie and her older brother Eli, a popular jock in the same school, and Tom, their single father who teaches at the school. In their own way, each member of the family searches for answers, even as medical authorities and school authorities conduct their own more official probes.

Abbott keeps the tension building as the hysteria rises. One important character turns out to be at the center of the mystery without even realizing it. It's all high-tension excitement, and best of all, a mystery in which nobody dies.