Early in William Landay’s Defending Jacob, the narrator — Andy Barber, a prominent Assistant District Attorney in a wealthy Boston suburb — describes the timeworn process that guides all prosecutors. Politely paraphrased, it is: lure, trap, confound. This is the mystery writer’s creed, as well. And so, in this psychological thriller, we are lured in by a lurid murder in a nice suburb, where these things don’t happen. We are presented with a plausible suspect, the title’s Jacob, who just happens to be the son of the ADA. And soon enough, Landay begins to confound us, in all directions.

Yes, Defending Jacob is a straightforward mystery. But, it is also an urgent meditation on the ambiguity of “proof” in a courtroom, on nature vs. nurture, on moral obligations, and on the limits of a parent’s love. Andy, it seems, comes from a family with a barbarous history, though this is something that he has tried to keep from everyone else. As the plot thickens, and as Jacob begins to look more and more like he might be the killer, we have to ask ourselves: Is it possible that there is a “murder gene?” If he did it — IF he did it — would this mean that Jacob was born this way? And if Jacob were not predestined to violence, would this mean that Andy and his wife, Laurie, were in some way responsible for raising a murderer?
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