A review of Defending Jacob by William Landay

Is it possible to inherit violence through your family genes? That is the central question in the novel Defending Jacob. Jacob Barber, age 14, is accused of the heinous murder of a classmate, Ben Rifkin. The story is narrated by Jacob's father Andy, an assistant DA in Newton, MA. Andy and Laurie, Jacob's parents, are in the beginning convinced of Jacob's innocence. As the story unfolds, information is revealed, both about Andy's bloody family history and Jacob's early childhood, that suggest he may not be innocent of this crime. The story is told in parts, running through a transcript of a Grand Jury proceeding taking place well after Jacob's trial for murder. Information is parceled out piece by piece in this way, as well as through the general storytelling of the plot. In the beginning, in fact up to half way through the book, I was struck by several aspects of Mr. Landay's writing. First, it is apparent that the author is himself a lawyer. He overexplains the process of the law over and over to the point where I was skimming sections just to get past the boring explanations. They were unnecessary. Another drawback to this novel is that the reader is hard pressed to find one likable character. Andy Barber is a head-in-the-sand kind of guy. He is so busy ignoring his low origins that he fails to notice either his wife or his son in a real way. He has no idea who they are. I didn't care for Jacob, although a character with as many issues as he has is obviously not going to be likable. I should have been able to like Laurie, however, or at least some of the secondary characters. There wasn't one in the bunch I enjoyed. In fact, it appeared that the author went out of his way to make them unlikable, especially in the case of Neil Loguidice (and yes, it was difficult to pronounce this name, which the reader had to read over and over as Mr. Loguidice is a main character) the next Assistant DA and the one who prosecutes Jacob. There were several other things I strongly disliked about this novel. It was only in the last 1/4 of the book that it got interesting. You would think a court case about murder would be more exciting, but it truly was not. The author did a poor job of writing the dialogue, especially in the first half of the book. It was very awkward and clunky. I had to reread sections to try and capture a flow in the wording, and it just wasn't there. Not enjoying the writing or the story makes it very difficult for me to want to finish a book. I kept on because I assumed there would be some payout at the end. There was (I won't give anything away here), but I didn't quite feel it was worth so much reading that isn't fun. I would not recommend this book, as I didn't enjoy it much.