Book Review #11 - Defending Jacob

If you like reading about legalese, you will like this book.

If you like reading about marriage and family drama, you will like this book.

If you like reading whodunits, you will like this book.

If you like reading in the first person narrative, you will like this book.

If you like tidy endings, you will hate this book.

William Landay, a former prosecutor, shows off his lawyering chops in this very compelling legal drama about an first assistant district attorney, Andy Barber, assigned to prosecute a murder case only to be pulled of it when his son, Jacob, becomes the prime suspect.

I know John Grisham kind of ruined the legitimacy of legal fiction with his formalistic and over-the-top plots but Landay gives the genre an authentic and gritty reality without involving the mob, the CIA, the supreme court or Washington DC.  Instead, he sets his court in suburban Massachusetts where murder crimes are nonexistent and the victim and suspect are teenage boys.  Moreover, he deliberately highlights the impotency, flaws and tricks of the legal system from both a prosecutor’s and defense council’s standpoint.  Some are depressing, others shocking and, more often than not, rather mundane.  I especially appreciated the view from the defense side of things, getting Andy’s point of view with the understanding of his extreme familial bias.  Knowing the game of law, he walks us through his narration deliberately with a sometime-in-the-future-looking-back hindsight.  The foreshadowing seems to give away certain outcomes but you still are forced to wonder.

Things aren’t so clear to his wife and mother of the defendant, Laurie.  As we only get Andy’s perspective, we only see Laurie and Jacob through his opinion and he clearly loves his wife and son.  But, he does not understand her suffering or her doubts and he certainly lacks the necessary impartiality to accurately see the state’s case against his son.  Andy just defends Jacob as he deems best.

Two things I very much enjoyed in this book were Landay’s weaving a court transcript throughout the book and his unabashed accuracy in how teenagers speak.  The court transcript felt like short but interesting intermissions from Andy’s story.  It was the only time we read something that Andy Barber wasn’t controlling.  It was refreshing but never long enough or distracting enough to pull you completely out of Andy’s fog.  It just let me catch my breath a bit and wonder what was going on.  And, so often, dialogue in books is written in a way that, while interesting to read, sounds like no one I know.  Landay’s teenagers sound like teenagers.

It’s not a very uplifting subject matter, thinking about murder and teenage murder at that, but Andy’s background, his discipline and his resolute determination to defend his son will make readers question how well we can really know another person, including our children, and the prejudices we undeniably have towards others.