3.5 stars. There was something about this book that made me want to find out what happened, and I read it very quickly. The style of writing makes it an easy read, and it is a very interesting story - inspired by a real life crime of the murder of two children in New York in 1965. Because their mother, Ruth Malone, doesn't behave in the way the police and most of society expect her to, as a grieving mother, she is held responsible for the crime.

I thought at first that the novel must follow the true crime pretty closely because there are long periods of time where nothing happens in the investigation, but after the book's end Flint states that it is a work of fiction, inspired by a true story. Perhaps this is my biggest issue with it, and maybe it's because it couldn't quite work out what it was: true crime, thriller, police procedural... Not that every book has to fit into an exact slot, I like the fact that Flint has resisted that, but it is written as if we are following the crime, the police investigation, and yet we learn no new revelations as the book progresses, it isn't terribly pacey, we aren't taken down any blind alleys. Perhaps Flint was thinking it was a character study of the reporter and the mother. I'm not sure.

Spoiler

My other plot issue is that Ruth Malone is charged with one count of manslaughter, and another of murder. And yet that isn't ever explained. Why the two charges? In court a witness says she sees Malone put the children in a car with an accomplice. The prosecution use this to show Malone's guilt, but I don't see how this could have convicted her of murder in a novel, where the plot needs to tight. (Perhaps this happened in the real case, but then it makes the book's plot flawed.) <\spoiler>

And in a very minor criticism, which didn't stop me from liking the book, but did pull me up a little short there were some copyediting issues. At the end of the novel, in the courtroom the photos of the dead children are taken down, and then a few pages on the policeman Devlin is staring at them. And somewhere else Devlin goes for lunch with the reporter, and we're told that everything was absolutely, exactly the same as the first time they'd had lunch. But Devlin eats a different meal to the first time. Silly things, but they niggled.

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