Monday, May 25, 2020

#25: Defending Jacob by William Landay

A prosecutor is assigned the murder of a teenager in an affluent suburb, and quickly realizes his own son is the prime suspect, in William Landay's Defending Jacob.

The prosecutor is dismissed from the case but starts his own investigation, focusing on a child predator who lives nearby, blurring the lines of law and order as evidence mounts against his son.  

Some breakneck turns in the narrative in the last third of the book dish up plenty of surprises, all the way to a nebulous but surprising and satisfying conclusion.

This book reminds me of early Scott Turow and John Grisham but also compares pretty strikingly to Lionel Shriver's We Need to Talk about Kevin.  

Defending Jacob came recommended, and was on my radar as there is a television miniseries version just out, so I grabbed this from Amazon and read it quickly.  

Recommended for those readers looking for one of those brick-sized legal thriller beach reads.  

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