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Though the party is not a lavish affair — just a gathering for friends and family in the backyard of a rental property on El Dorado Drive in Grosse Pointe, Mich. — it’s more than Pam Bishop can afford, and every one of her guests knows it.

Pam’s ramshackle rental on El Dorado Drive, though several steps down from the home she grew up in or the mansion she moved into when she got married, is a symbol of the reckless pursuit of wealth that destroys those who can’t see through the illusion.

The answer proves to be her undoing, and the second half of “El Dorado Drive” follows Harper as she tries to solve her sister’s murder.

In “El Dorado Drive,” however, the focus is on adults, and the past mostly stays in the past.

In an eerie echo, Abbott begins “El Dorado Drive,” her 11th novel, with a graduation party at the beginning of the Great Recession.