DEFENDING JACOB: WILLIAM LANDAY

I have had this book sitting on my shelf for a couple of weeks, not sure I wanted to read about a teen age murder.  But I ran out of books to read, at least it felt that way though I have a mess of books on my book shelves, many of which I have not read.  So I started DEFENDING JACOB and was immediately pulled in my the narrator,  Andy Barber, Assistant DA in a small town in Massachusetts.  A fourteen year old boy, Ben Rifkin, is found stabbed in a park.  Andy takes over the case and for a week, it looks as if there at no leads.  Then, abruptly, officers appear at his house, along with Assistant DA Neal Logidice, and Andy and his wife, Laurie's nightmare begins.  Evidence has been found pointing to their son, Jacob, as the murderer.  And the novel begins.

Both parents are convinced of their son's innocence.  They hire a lawyer, begin his defense, and we are brought into their world, isolated from friends and family, virtual outcasts in their own town, left to themselves, to defend Jacob along with his lawyer.  The towns people, as well as the media, assume Jacob's guilt.  He not only bought a knife, said he would kill Ben if he continued to harass and bully him, but told this to a friend.  And, interestingly, he published an original story on the Internet, which had the basic outlines of the murder though the names were changed.  Slowly, we begin to doubt Jacob's innocence, though the narrator, his father, refuses to doubt Jacob.  Because they fear an attempt to use a 'murder gene' as evidence( Andy' father has been in jail for fifty years for murder), they go to a renowned Harvard psychologist, who interviews both the family and Andy.  She ends up more or less admitting that Jacob has the make up of a potential killer, a lack of empathy, a emotional intelligence of a seven year old.  Neither of these prove he did the crime; they just suggest that he had the capacity and indifference to do it.  Andy never believes this; Laurie begins to doubt.

Andy has never seen his father, a murderer, since he was a five year old.  He finally visits him, to ask if they could have a sample of his DNA, to disprove the 'murder gene.'  His father is unrepentant, though he seems very interested in his grandson's problem, and pumps Andy for details of the trial.

We follow the angst and disintegration of the family, as the trail nears, and during the trail.  We empathize with the family, their ups and downs, as evidence is presented.  Towards the end, all looks lost when a suspect named Paltz, an admitted pedophile, hangs himself and confesses, in a note, his guilt for the crime.  Jacob is released, all seems well but Andy knows better.  His father has a friend, Father O'Reilly, a fixer of problems so to speak, who to save Jacob, has most likely arranged the suicide.  Andy never tells his suspicions to the court or his wife.

Things seem to settle down; the three of them, Jacob, Laurie, and Andy decide to get away, to go on a vacation to Jamaica.  All is well, and Jacob evens seems to have found a girl friend his age at the resort, Hope Connors.  The entire family seems relaxed and happy, swimming, lots of beach time, the two kids off enjoying themselves.  Then, Hope disappears, is found a week later, drowned, with the suggestion that she may have been choked to death.  Of course, Jacob is accused but there's no evidence so he returns home.

Andy, the narrator, still seems convinced of his son's innocence, or won't admit it.  Life goes on, though Laurie has changed, is distracted and depressed.  She takes her son off on a college trip and consciously, we assume,  drives the car into a bridge abutment, killing Jacob, injuring herself.  The novel ends with Andy at a Grand Jury hearing, defending his wife against accusations of murder, the murder of her son.

The book is very readable and you are pulled along with Andy, hoping  for the best but expecting the worsts, right from the start.