Book Review: Defending Jacob by William Landay

Is your child capable of murder? This was the question that Andy Barber had to answer in a fantastic novel Defending Jacob by William Landay. Read from the back of the novel:

Andy Barber has been an assistant district attorney in his Massachusetts county for more than twenty years. He is respected in his community, tenacious in the courtroom, and happy at home with his wife, Laurie, and their son, Jacob. But when a shocking crime shatters the New England town, Andy is blindsided by what happens next: His fourteen-year-old son ischarged with the murder of a fellow student. Every instinct Andy has as a parent rallies to protect his boy. Jacob insists that he is innocent, and Andy believes him. Andy must. He's his father. But, as damning facts and shocking revelations surface, as a marriage threatens to crumble and the trial intensifies, as the crisis reveals how little a father knows about his son, Andy will face a trial of his own- between loyalty and justice, between truth and allegation, between a past he's tried to bury and a future

he cannot conceive.

This book was absolutely fantastic, could not put it down! I had never heard of the author before but he has already been added to my must read list. His other two books are The Strangler, a Los Angeles Times Favorite Crime Book of the Year, and Mission Flats, winner of the Creasy Memorial Dagger Award for Best First Crime Novel and a Barry Award nominee. I highly recommend this book, it forces you to think of some very dark questions no parent could ever conceive of thinking about their child.