If you polled 100 people about who is the awfullest among the awful people in "The Great Gatsby," I bet 99 of them would answer "that louse Tom Buchanan." In the new "The Gatsby Gambit," Buchanan finally gets what's coming to him.

Daisy Buchanan's loathsome husband is murdered early on in "Gambit," Claire Anderson-Wheeler's mystery novel that's timed to capitalize on this year's "Gatsby" centennial. North Dakotan-turned-dreamy-poor-little-rich-boy Jay Gatsby is around in "Gambit," but the new book's protagonist is his hitherto unknown sister, Greta. Her name, you'll note, is an anagram for "Great" and, between her wit and her insightful suspicion of her brother's dissolute pals, the character is indeed another great Gatsby.

With F. Scott Fitzgerald's timeless characters now in the public domain, we're getting lots of fresh takes on them, including several graphic novel versions, a book called "Nick" that puts observant Nick Carraway at its center and a comic book that pits Jay Gatsby against Godzilla, "Monsterpiece Theatre."

Anderson-Wheeler isn't the stylist that Fitzgerald was (not many are) but she understands his characters. That understanding informs "Gambit," which smartly recognizes that star-crossed lovers Jay and Daisy were never meant to be, even with Tom conveniently out of the picture. Anderson-Wheeler also knows that happiness may never be in the cards for any of these characters, despite their wealth and beauty.

In that respect, this snippet of plaintive alienation seems very Fitzgerald-y, even though the character of Greta is entirely Anderson-Wheeler's: "Greta never felt lonely in this house when it was empty — on the contrary, it was a magical place to be with a little solitude — but on those occasions when Jay stuffed it full of revelers, she did feel lonely."

What normal person wouldn't be lonely with soulless socialite Jordan Baker nearby, clutching a Tom Collins and moaning that a murder investigation has messed up her leisure plans?

The Gatsby Gambit

As "Gambit" opens, Greta arrives at fictitious West Egg in Long Island, N.Y. She seems to live there part time, as evidenced by a nugget of info that also foretells how she'll spend most of the novel: In between encounters with a killer, she's reading a new Agatha Christie novel while she stays at her brother's mansion (the title is never mentioned but the timing suggests it's Christie's third book, "Murder on the Links").

That Christie book is an early clue that "Gatsby Gambit" is peeling off in a different direction from Fitzgerald's original. "Gambit" is dissimilar from Christie in several ways — Anderson-Wheeler is not as scrupulous about giving us the clues we need to solve the mystery — but its setting is classic Christie: a remote mansion, stuffed with wealthy people who have so many motives to kill each other that it's surprising anyone makes it out alive.

If "The Great Gatsby" is going to turn into a "The Avengers"-style bit of intellectual property, with spinoffs of spinoffs of spinoffs — and, clearly, it already is — then "The Gatsby Gambit" is an example of how well that could go.

Anderson-Wheeler obviously loves and has been thoughtful about the source material, and she has written a novel that respects its elder while, like a boat against the current, she takes its characters in a completely new direction.

The Gatsby Gambit

By: Claire Anderson-Wheeler.

Publisher: Viking, 353 pages, $30.