The Prologue opens on the Monday after Easter. The novel begins with a slow pan into the swanky mansion of Fred and Sheila Merton in Brecken Hill, New York, a fashionable neighborhood in Aylesford in the Hudson Valley north of Manhattan. The narrator leads the reader into the house, following a trail of blood that leads first to the dead body of Sheila Merton, in her nightclothes, and then into the kitchen, where Fred lies “sprawled on the floor in a dark and viscous pool of blood” (2), his throat slit. The narrator asks, “Who would do such a thing?” (2).

It is Easter Sunday, and the Merton family gathers for dinner. Dan and Lisa Merton prepare to head to his parents’ home. They are uneasy, anxious. Dan, once groomed to take over the father’s massive robotics company, now faces an uncertain financial future because his father sold the company for a tidy profit without consulting Dan. Dan dreads dinner—he knows he must ask his father for a loan.

His older sister, Catherine, a successful dermatologist, and her husband, Ted, a dentist, get ready.