The Next Best Book Club discussion

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I found this to be such a compelling read. I started the book and just couldn't put it down until I finished. I can't wait to see what people have to say about the idea of a "murder gene".

I liked this one quite a bit. It's not so much a legal thriller as it is a modern horror story. A very dark book, very well-written. It didn't hurt either that I grew up in Newton, MA, where the book took place, and the author clearly knows the city.

The following is essentially my review of the book, which I read last year. I have marked part of it as a spoiler for those readers who have not yet finished the book, although I don't think it would spoil it all that much.

I might have given this book 4 stars (instead of 3) had it not been for the problems with the technology which plays a MAJOR role in the story. Like they say, the devil is in the details. The main character, Andrew (Andy) Barber, is a 51-year-old assistant district attorney in Massachusetts. He and his wife and their 14-year-old son Jacob live in an affluent suburb near Cambridge and Boston. Andy is highly respected as an ADA, but things start to fall apart after his son is accused of murdering a classmate. (view spoiler)[ After being assigned to work with the police who are investigating the murder, Andy is pulled off the case when the evidence starts to point toward Jacob. Not only is he removed from the case, he is put on a leave of absence as well. Andy is convinced of Jacob's innocence and pursues another lead involving a known child molester who lives in the area.

It is not only the upcoming murder trial that has a devastating effect on the Barbers, but Andy's revelation of a family secret he has been hiding for years. This secret causes Andy's wife Laurie to distrust her husband and creates doubts in her mind about Jacob. The novel raises questions about how far parents will go to protect their children and whether violence has a genetic component. There is a twist at the end. In fact, there are a couple of surprises in store.

Another reader has already criticized the novel for its technological errors, but I'll go ahead and mention some of the things that irritated me. Jacob uses Facebook to communicate with his friends. OK, Facebook was around in 2007 and kids his age might have been on it. But there is a comment that Jacob makes as his trial is approaching about having his own hashtag on Twitter. First of all, Twitter had about 16,000 users at the end of 2006. The number of Twitter users exceeded 700,000 at the end of 2007. The hashtag wasn't even introduced to Twitter until late August 2007. The murder investigation and trial take place between the months of April and October 2007. I doubt that Jacob's case would have merited a hashtag on Twitter. Twitter was a relatively new service and I doubt that many users would have been commenting on the trial. I know it's only fiction, but still. The worst error, in my opinion, was how Andy repeatedly mentions Jacob's iPod Touch. Apple didn't even introduce the iPod Touch until early September 2007. If Andy had just said that Jacob had an iPod and let it go at that, it would have been all right. The iPod Touch plays a significant role in the story--that's why I'm so critical of this glitch. These mistakes might have been caught if the editor had been paying closer attention. Moral of the story: Editors, don't trust your authors so much. Thanks to the Internet, it's relatively easy to check whether these details are consistent with the facts. So go ahead and do it, then. (hide spoiler)]

Such a good book. It was hard to put down. Keeps you questioning loyalty to family vs. cold, hard facts. I knew nothing of this author before this book and never heard about this book, just random loaded audio book several months ago from always available files of my local library. I am happy I did! I was not a fun of courtrooms plots, but this is amazingly well paced legal thriller-drama with a twist I did not see coming at all. Sad and haunting, with bits of family humor thrown in that for me kept the characters more real and likable. I definitely recommend this book to my friends now. I was under so much impression, that I even wrote here, on goodreads, praising letter to the author.William Landay and got thank you letter from him back!

This is a multi layered story with themes that ring a bell inside with so many. I have enjoyed the discussions that have been found on different groups at GoodReads. Everyone's opinion so varied. My personal take was remembrance of family trauma experienced with troubled teens. The struggle with whether to seek counseling or to hope all will be well. Then the horror of finding out -- yes, we should have asked for help. I also felt a part of the story being familiar with the life in a smaller New England town. Been there, done that. The legal part of the story was very well played. I thought the author did a tremendous job fleshing out the motivations of the adult characters. The teenager remains a mystery. I wonder if other wise teens would recognize the problem teen. I would like to hear from the younger folk.

Hi there! I'm a new member and I was excited to start getting involved, so I finished Defending Jacob last night! Like PP's have said, I thought that the novel was compelling; I couldn't put the book down because I felt so desperate to know the "truth". William Landay reminds me of an amateur John Grisham. My big gripe with this novel is that I thought the female characters (the very few female characters) were poorly developed. Laurie was the only prominent female character, and most of the mentions of her focused on her appearance. I just didn't feel like Landay really cared about making the women relate-able or interesting. Paul Duffy was a more rounded character than Jacob's own mother. Other than that, it was an exciting story and I enjoyed it.

I haven't read a courtroom thriller in some time and this one kept my interest. I liked the twists and turns it made, especially at the end. Glad that it was chosen for this month's title. It's good to mix things up with different genres and try new authors.

I liked this, it held my interest, but I kept wishing we'd heard from the mother instead of the father. I.e. would a mother just know, one way or another, about her son?

The Facebook and twitter bit mentioned above also struck me as weird, easily fact checked.

Mari wrote: "I liked this, it held my interest, but I kept wishing we'd heard from the mother instead of the father. I.e. would a mother just know, one way or another, about her son?

The Facebook and twitter ..."


I think it’s more natural for writer-male to show father's side of story and have his voice as dominant voice. But good example of mother's voice is in different book - We Need to Talk About Kevin by Lionel Shriver

This post has a plot spoiler, but I still haven't figured how to mark it yet, so if you haven't finished the book please skip my post:

I think that for me I needed to hear only the father's point of view to create a sense of doubt in my mind about the son's guilt. I think that is what was so brilliant about the book. I know as I was reading it I was hoping that the son was innocent. I even wished at one point that the other suspect would kill another kid and then it would be revealed that the son was in fact innocent. I think the author shows overwhelming evidence against the son's innocence, but by only giving us the father's point of view it plays this sort of mind trick where the reader doesn't really know what is true, even after the book is over. I think if any other points of view were revealed the mystery that the author created wouldn't have been as strong. I know I personally had to decompress a few days after reading to come to terms with the fact that there is a 99.9% probability that the son was the killer.

Wow! I felt like my eyes were about to come out of my head at how shocked I was by the time I finished the book. I like reading stories where you truly have no idea how it could end and the possibility of how many different endings it could be. When the son of a lawyer is accused of murdering a boy his age, his father is ready to defend him at all costs. Despite what everyone is saying about Jacob, including his own wife, Andy is still willing to defend Jacob and not be open to the possibility of Jacob being guilty. (view spoiler)[ I loved how unexpected that ending was. When Jacob killed Hope, it reminded me of the Natalee Holloway case where it took a second murder for everyone to truly see with their eyes open and accept the reality of a person. Even though it didn't come right out and say that Jacob was guilty for both murders, you were at least 99% sure that he was truly guilty. I mean, Jacob had mental tendencies that were abnormal and the one he murdered bullied him. While everyone feels like his mother went way out of hand in murdering her own son, you can understand why she did. She felt no mental hospital would fix him and he would probably murder again. She didn't want the "murder gene" to spread and wanted it to end. And even though Andy is not technically a murderer, he almost is for always defending Jacob and not seeing what is right in front of him. By acting let Jacob is always the innocent one, that is giving Jacob more and more opportunities to kill. I'm sure his mother thought she would die too. I wonder what happened to her. (hide spoiler)] This book was one of the greatest recent books I've read so far. I recommend it.

Colleen wrote: "This post has a plot spoiler, but I still haven't figured how to mark it yet, so if you haven't finished the book please skip my post:

I think that for me I needed to hear only the father's point ..."

(view spoiler)[ Yeah, I feel like even though we don't officially have the truth, I like it better that way because in life, "what you see is what you get." The evidence of Jacob being a killer was shown very innocently, even with the whole thing with Hope. Like all of these inescapable events were unfolding that showed us who Jacob was. All of the evidence by the end of the book showed how Jacob was the true killer and his mom was the only one who saw it. (hide spoiler)]

Yuliya wrote: "Mari wrote: "I liked this, it held my interest, but I kept wishing we'd heard from the mother instead of the father. I.e. would a mother just know, one way or another, about her son?

The Facebook..."

Thanks for the recommendation!

I agree, he's a male prosecutor/dad and that's the natural voice for his writing. Maybe what I wanted was more frank discussion between the parents. Something was missing for me, and it wasn't plot or pacing related, because I kept turning the pages. I think after the animal noises, I felt like "Come on, guy. You must know more than you're telling your readers." That was a watershed point in the novel for me, and I thought it should have been a watershed moment for the narrator too.

Carly wrote: "Wow! I felt like my eyes were about to come out of my head at how shocked I was by the time I finished the book. I like reading stories where you truly have no idea how it could end and the possibi..."

That's very well said! I wanted definite closure, and I looked a lot of different places to see if I could get the actual answer so I could know for sure. There was that tiny tiny doubt. And I also wonder about the mom.

"Jacob insists that he is innocent, and Andy believes him. Andy must. He’s his father." So before i started reading understood this would pretty much be the theme throughout.
fairly early on in the book i was convinced that Jacob did it and blown away by the denial Andy was in (view spoiler)[ after finding the knife in Jacobs drawer. i felt like Laurie believed right then that her son did it no doubts in her. then a little more then half way through the book i started to think you know what this kid might just be innocent not sure the exactly thing that lead me to think that but from that point till Jamaica and Hopes death i was very skeptical.
the author did a great job sticking to that "hes his father" theme by not only having Andy never doubting his sons innocents but by also Having Andy's father Bloody Billy Barber, neither have seen each other for like 45 years but Billy still did what he thought was right to protect his sons family,(i was actually excepting Andy to at least punch Patz when he confronted him after following him around town for however long)
now the mother i think she should have been taking one of those mdma knockout qtip swap tests. seemed to me that she cared more bout the fact the she produce a killer then the fact her son was might be innocent. even if Hope never went missing i think Laurie may have ended up hurting herself down the road for the guilt of betraying her son.(you cant take that back) this is just my opinion of coarse and i formed it based off the ending, by her crashing her car and killing her son. i think by her doing that shows how selfish she was, i dont think so could go through the humiliation a second time, all she really did is rob the parents of both Hope and Ben of any true closure
with all that being said i wish instead of exploring the murder gene i wish the author threw in something about SSRI antidepressants which have been linked to a large amount of the school shootings over the last 2 decades.
in the end i am about 99% that Jacob was a killer but we will never know for sure. i will be readin more books by this author for sure, i like how im still thinking about it almost a day after finishing it (hide spoiler)]

Finished the book last night and thoroughly enjoyed it. Like Yulyia I was reminded of 'We need to talk about Kevin' by Lionel Shriver, though the narrator here was Kevins mother.Also Kevin was more of a sociopath with no friends while Jacob had his circle of geeky friends.
In both books it is the mother who identifies suspect behaviours in their children at an early age. In 'Defending Jacob' we are considering is genetic make up an important factor in the development of human behaviour and traits. Scary to imagine. It also reminded me of the film 'The Boys from Brazil' where boys are cloned using Hitlers DNA in an attempt by nazis to recreate Hitler. All very interesting, So the real question is 'Is there really a murder Gene?'One thing for sure after finishing the book is that really a parents love is unconditional. Laurie or Andy never stop loving their son. Laurie is realistic about him, Andy is either in denial or he carries the murder gene
so has no problem with his sons behaviour

Wow! That was my reaction after I got to the last page. Defending Jacob began a little slowly but once Jacob was arrested I was hooked. It brought up a list of intriguing issues – Is the tendency and willingness to commit murder genetic? If your child is accused of a crime, how far would you go to protect that child? And if you think your child might be guilty, what do you do? What is your responsibility to your child and to his/her potential victims?

Andy and Laurie, parents of 14-year-old Jacob, find themselves having to deal with these questions when Jacob is arrested for the murder of a classmate. Andy, an assistant district attorney, is convinced his son is innocent. Laurie is less certain. Andy has to believe Jacob his innocent, as much as for Jacob as for himself. Being the son and grandson of a murderer himself, Andy made an affirmative choice to lead a different life. He cut himself off from his family and his past, for his own sake as well as for his son’s. The idea that Jacob could nevertheless turn out to follow in the violent footsteps of the family he never knew existed is too hard for Andy to consider, let alone accept.

The story is told from Andy’s perspective. Though I get why the author wrote it this way, I sorely wanted to get Laurie’s version of the story. Andy makes Laurie seems weak in mind and spirit and almost incapable of dealing with the reality of situation. He has tunnel vision – he can only focus on the trial and getting a not-guilty verdict. Nothing else matters to him and Laurie's lack of the same focus is a weakness in Andy's eyes. His description of Laurie – her attempts to communicate with the murdered boy’s parents, her doubts about Jacob – came off as patronizing. Though perhaps this is the only way it could be. To give credence to Laurie’s doubt would only serve to undermine Andy’s certainty. And he needs, for his own sake, to be certain.

(view spoiler)[ It was interesting how with all the talk about the murder gene in Andy’s blood line, it was Laurie who committed the act of violence that ends the book.

I have to mention the daycare thing. The suggestion that putting Jacob in daycare when he was baby could have potentially turned him into a killer really irked me. I was also annoyed at how the fact that Laurie didn’t stop working and start staying home with her kid till he was four was mentioned more than once, but there was never any mention about Andy’s job or the time he spent with (or away from) his son. For a moment it seemed like the novel had reverted backwards in time to the 1950s or something. (hide spoiler)]

I enjoyed Defending Jacob -- it was suspenseful. I found it hard to put down once I started reading it. I think I finished it in one or two sittings. (view spoiler)[From the very beginning, I didn't trust the narrator -- I thought he got too cozy, too quickly. I mean this in the sense that he wasn't able to be objective. (hide spoiler)] I enjoyed the uncertainty; the twists and turns throughout the story.

The book was chosen as one of three finalists for the Harper Lee Prize for legal fiction this year. You can see the other books and vote here. Voting is open through June 30th.

Defending Jacob
was incredible.On one hand I couldn't believe the father was so determined in his beliefs, and his mother came up with the solution she did.

This is one of the worst books I have ever read. It is only the second book I have physically gotten rid of immediately upon completion. Beyond unbelievable. And not to mention the "give up" ending. I am truly surprised that so many find this book remarkable at all.