Title: The Holdout

Author: Graham Moore

Publisher: Random House 2020

Genre: Thriller

Pages: 336

Rating: 4/5 stars

Reading Challenges:

It’s the most sensational case of the decade. Fifteen-year-old Jessica Silver, heiress to a billion-dollar real estate fortune, vanishes on her way home from school, and her teacher, Bobby Nock, a twenty-five-year-old African American man, is the prime suspect. The subsequent trial taps straight into America’s most pressing preoccupations: race, class, sex, law enforcement, and the lurid sins of the rich and famous. It’s an open-and-shut case for the prosecution, and a quick conviction seems all but guaranteed—until Maya Seale, a young woman on the jury, convinced of Nock’s innocence, persuades the rest of the jurors to return the verdict of not guilty, a controversial decision that will change all their lives forever.

Flash forward ten years. A true-crime docuseries reassembles the jury, with particular focus on 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.

As the present-day murder investigation weaves together with the story of what really happened during their deliberation, told by each of the jurors in turn, the secrets they have all been keeping threaten to come out—with drastic consequences for all involved.

A very readable murder mystery / thriller / court room drama. I actually read half of it in one setting. The story really does pull the reader along and I needed to see what happened next. I was interested in the overall mystery and needed to find out the identity of the killer. I wondered about the second murder but was actually less interested in that. I wanted to find out Rick’s secret more than anything. The ending felt rushed and I wasn’t so excited about the reveal of Rick’s killer. I really wished that it had been something more sinister. I did enjoy the glimpse in the various juror’s lives, but wanted a bit more on that aspect. Overall a fun light read for a strange a week.

Next up on the TBR pile: