If We Were Villains
By: M.L. Rio
Edition: First U.S. edition.
Publisher: Flatiron Books
Published: 2017
Place of publication: New York, NY, USA
Language: eng
Format: Hardcover
Number of pages: 358
ISBN-13: 9781250095282
Subjects: College students; Actors; Fiction
First sentence: I sit with my wrists cuffed to the table and I think, But that I am forbid / To tell the secrets of my prison house, / I could a tale unfold whose lightest word / Would harrow up thy soul.
Description: Oliver Marks has just served ten years in jail - for a murder he may or may not have committed. On the day he's released, he's greeted by the man who put him in prison. Detective Colborne is retiring, but before he does, he wants to know what really happened a decade ago.

As one of seven young actors studying Shakespeare at an elite arts college, Oliver and his friends play the same roles onstage and off: hero, villain, tyrant, temptress, ingenue, extra. But when the casting changes, and the secondary characters usurp the stars, the plays spill dangerously over into life, and one of them is found dead. The rest face their greatest acting challenge yet: convincing the police, and themselves, that they are blameless.