Fifteen-year-old Jessica Silver vanishes on her way home from school, and her teacher, Bobby Nock, a twenty-five-year-old African American man, is the prime suspect. Flash forward ten years. A true-crime docuseries reassembles the jury, with particular focus on juror Maya, now a defense attorney herself. When one of the jurors is found dead in Maya’s hotel room, all evidence points to her as the killer. Now, she must prove her own innocence—by getting to the bottom of a case that is far from closed.
The twists are sharp and the flashbacks that uncover what each juror knows are placed for maximum impact in this rollicking legal thriller. In this departure from his carefully plotted historical fiction, Moore expertly combines deft character work with mounting bombshell revelations in a story that will attract new readers and also seems primed for the big screen.
Mr. Moore’s smartly constructed book examines the voracious nature of tabloid journalism, the elasticity of fact and the way the letter of the law conflicts with mercy, and its effective surprises continue even into its final chapter.
... [a] stem-winder of a murder mystery wrapped in a legal thriller ... The story is gripping, and the pace is furious, but the author also manages to take the scenic route with some nice writing.
