Riley Thorn and the Dead Guy Next Door

The mansion on Front Street where Riley Thorn lives symbolizes home and community: “The crumbling stone mansion” belongs to Blossom’s friend Lily, who “inherited the house” and opened its “guest bedrooms to complete strangers” (6). Riley moved there after she and Griffin Gentry divorced. She had different expectations for her adult life, and didn’t expect to be living in an attic room alone in her mid-thirties, but the Front Street mansion offers her a place of her own. Her space “on the third floor” includes “room for a bed, a small living area, and a microscopic kitchenette” (6). Full of “hard angles and weird slants” (6), Riley’s Front Street living space is as idiosyncratic as her character and her band of misfit friends. Over time, she comes to feel comfortable in this place. She gets to know her neighbors, who ultimately become her closest confidantes and even help her and Nick in the murder investigation. By the end of the novel, Nick has moved into the Front Street mansion, too. He takes over the room across the hall from Riley—where her late neighbor, Dickie Frick, once lived. Together, they integrate their burgeoning romantic life into the Front Street community.