Jean Hanff Korelitz has impeccable storytelling credentials of the literary-thriller variety. Her murder mystery You Should Have Known (2014) was made into the HBO series The Undoing, starring Nicole Kidman. The Plot (2021) was a compulsive whodunnit about literary theft. Now comes The Latecomer, about a wealthy conflicted Jewish-American family, the Oppenheimers.

Salo and Johanna Oppenheimer live in Brooklyn on the Esplanade, having bought their house in 1979. Salo is head of the family investment firm, Wurttemburg Holdings; more secretly, he’s begun collecting modern art. (Like the house, the art he buys so presciently will rise in value.) Johanna, though, has no