Sarah's Library

6/1 - This is a good legal thriller with the ADA's son as the main, if not only, suspect of the murder of a boy from his class.  The only evidence of his guilt is the discovery of a single fingerprint on the jacket of the murder victim, with no way of telling when Jacob (the ADA's son) touched the victim; and some hearsay that the victim bullied the defendant given as a reason for motive.
That sounds like very weak evidence to base a homicide case on.  If Jacob hadn't been the ADA's son then I don't think the DA would have been so quick to take the case to trial, she didn't want to seem like she was being soft on Jacob because of who his father is.  Jack McCoy (long-standing ADA in Law and Order played by Sam Waterstone) would never have gone to trial with such flimsy evidence.  I like the way Landay gives us little hints and teasers of what's coming up in the last section of the book.  I can see something's going to happen between Andy and Laurie and I'm not as convinced of Jacob's innocence as Andy claims to be.  I think Jacob is too smug and some of the evidence that the jury isn't going to see, like the violent porn website and the knife that he owned, plus the off-colour 'jokes' about the murder and his apparent desire for his 15 minutes of fame all add up to a boy that appears a lot more guilty than the actual 'evidence' shows he is.

8/1 - WARNING: SPOILER AHEAD.  I really liked the way the scenes from the courtroom featuring Andy and Logiudice were a trick.  As you read it you think you're reading bits from him testifying at Jacob's trial and then suddenly, you realise it's not Jacob's trial it's Laurie's.  I thought Jacob might not be innocent and so I wasn't all that surprised when another dead body turned up around Jacob, but I didn't imagine he would be stupid enough to repeat his crime so soon after being set free, plus this time he didn't have ANY obvious motive.  Why would he want to kill this girl who was interested in him, unless he's graduated from simply troubled to an actual sociopath.  It wasn't made clear, I guess the reader is supposed to make up their own mind.  I WAS surprised by the revelation that Laurie killed Jacob.  I feel like he has parents who's emotions sat at either end of the spectrum.  Laurie didn't believe that Jacob was innocent from the beginning and was constantly planning how to deal with his conviction and sentence as well as how they should deal morally as the parents of a murderer, while Andy believed 100% in Jacob's innocence against all the evidence, even after the second murder (not sure I could be so 100% sure of my child).  I don't think either parent handled the situation well, you can't fall apart and you can't implicitly trust whatever your child tells you.  I mean, do you trust your 15-year-old when they tell you that they haven't been drinking, even though you can smell the alcohol on their breath?  No, so why would you trust, without any qualifications, what you're child tells you about a much more serious crime?  Anyway, despite my problems with Andy's naivete and Laurie's idiotic belief in the 'murder gene' I really enjoyed the story especially the misdirection angle.