{"id":650,"date":"2012-03-08T16:50:34","date_gmt":"2012-03-08T23:50:34","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lindabrinson.com\/?p=650"},"modified":"2012-03-08T16:50:34","modified_gmt":"2012-03-08T23:50:34","slug":"love-vs-justice","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lindabrinson.com\/?p=650","title":{"rendered":"Love vs. justice"},"content":{"rendered":"

It\u2019s spring break, and I\u2019m sure my students are hard at work on the articles they have due soon after we reconvene in Chapel Hill. My assignment to myself was to try to get caught up on some book reviews. There are some that are more belated than this one, but Defending Jacob<\/em> is on the best-seller lists right now, so I\u2019d thought I\u2019d take advantage of the opportunity to be timely.<\/p>\n

By Linda C. Brinson<\/p>\n

DEFENDING JACOB. By William Landay. Delacorte Press. 421 pages. $26.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>This is a book that grips you, shakes you up and doesn’t want to turn you loose. It had such an effect on me that several times I had to resist the urge to sneak a look toward the end just to see if things were going to turn out all right. I was nearly as worried about Jacob Barber as I would have been about my own son. And that is part of William Landay\u2019s genius: He gets to the heart of what it is to be a parent who loves and wants to protect his or her child no matter what.<\/p>\n

Defending Jacob<\/em> ranks up there with the best of legal thrillers. The case develops sometimes with what seems agonizing slowness, sometimes with heart-stopping speed. The investigation, the legal chess game, the tension between prosecution and defense, the conflicts within the defense team \u2013 all are depicted realistically and with mounting suspense. But from the start, there is much more at stake than a lawyer\u2019s success or even a defendant\u2019s freedom. A family \u2013 parents who love their child, husband and wife whose love for each other created the child, and the man-child himself \u2013 hangs in the balance, all entwined in the legalities and far too aware of the imperfections of the justice system.<\/p>\n

The story is told by Andy Barber, who\u2019s been a successful assistant district attorney in a nice suburb in Massachusetts for 20 years. He and his wife, Laurie, have one child, Jacob, who seems a pretty typical 14-year-old \u2013 absorbed in his own world, sometimes a little surly, but basically a good kid.<\/p>\n

When a high-school classmate of Jacob\u2019s is stabbed to death on his walk to school one morning, Andy starts working the case. As the lead ADA, he usually works high-profile cases himself.<\/p>\n

But before long, the case takes a shocking turn: Jacob becomes the leading suspect, and Andy\u2019s initial involvement only complicates an already terrible situation.<\/p>\n

Most people try to banish those nightmare scenarios that make parenting a terrifying endeavor.\u00a0 You try to take the right precautions, teach the children how to fend for themselves, and try not to dwell on all the dangers out there in the world too much. If you give in to the worries, you\u2019ll smother the child.<\/p>\n

But what parent of a \u201cnormal\u201d child even, in his darkest nightmares, imagines that child as a murderer? You don\u2019t have to if you read Defending Jacob<\/em>: Landay has done the imagining for you. Andy is put on paid leave from the prosecutor\u2019s office. He and Laurie hire a defense lawyer he admires, but Andy acts as a part of the defense team.<\/p>\n

He believes Jacob when the boy insists he is innocent \u2013 Andy simply cannot do anything else. But as he probes deeper into the case, he begins to learn things about his son that he\u2019d rather not know. Then, too, there\u2019s the matter of Andy\u2019s own heritage, especially the father he had let people believe was not a part of his life. And their courtroom adversary is another assistant DA whom Andy had helped train.<\/p>\n

Through the months of trial preparation, and then into the trial itself, the Barber family struggles to maintain some sanity. If anything, the ordeal takes more of a toll on Laurie, the wife and mother, than on anyone else.<\/p>\n

Andy must confront in a new way the big questions he\u2019s dealt with for years professionally: the flaws in the justice system; the possibility that truth and justice will diverge; the lines between what\u2019s right or desirable and what\u2019s legal. And all of those conflicts are compounded by questions of where his loyalty should lie, and of what the nature of unconditional love is and should be.<\/p>\n

Landay is an outstanding writer. The characters are so real you ache for them. And the story builds convincingly to a stunning conclusion.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It\u2019s spring break, and I\u2019m sure my students are hard at work on the articles they have due soon after we reconvene in Chapel Hill. My assignment to myself was to try to get caught up on some book reviews. There are some that are more belated than this one, but Defending Jacob is on […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7,14],"tags":[136,216,215],"class_list":["post-650","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-contemporary-literary-fiction","category-thriller-suspense","tag-contemporary-fiction","tag-courtroom-thriller","tag-landay"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lindabrinson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/650","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lindabrinson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lindabrinson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lindabrinson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lindabrinson.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=650"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/lindabrinson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/650\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":654,"href":"https:\/\/lindabrinson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/650\/revisions\/654"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lindabrinson.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=650"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lindabrinson.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=650"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lindabrinson.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=650"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}