Parenting can be murder

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William Landay | Photo by Henry Landay

For William Landay, 48, of Boston, writing a book was on his “bucket list.” It’s very much a goal he can cross out and consider a done deal now.

“At age 30, I decided to begin writing fiction just to see if I could do it,” said Landay. “When I sold the first book, I ended up getting two new book deals, and that’s how I became a (full-time) writer.”

His debut novel, Mission Flats, won the Creasey Memorial Dagger Award for Best First Crime Novel and was also a Barry Award nominee.

Landay’s second book, The Strangler, was named a Los Angeles Times Favorite Crime Book of the Year.

Up-to-date

With his brand new publication, Defending Jacob (Random House), Landay delivers a thriller in the style of Scott Turow and John Grisham. This page-turner involves murder, family secrets, parenting issues, complex relationships, and a climactic courtroom trial. The book is current with its technology, involving the evidentiary use of social media, particularly Facebook, and touching on the emerging science of neurocriminology.

Jacob is a 14-year-old eighth-grader in an upscale small town, with parents who love him dearly and who want only the best for him. Then a classmate is found brutally stabbed in the park near their middle school and the evidence points to Jacob.

The young man will be put on trial as an adult in his state of Massachusetts, and his attorney father becomes involved as co-counsel for his defense. Dark family secrets that impact the whole situation lurk in shadows, like storm clouds that hover over each page, drawing the reader in but obscuring any solid conclusion of innocence.

More murder

Later in the book, additional twists and turns, not to mention another dead body, make for a harrowing ending. With the second death, circumstances are reminiscent of the sensational Natalie Holloway case and the disturbed young man, Joran van der Sloot.

Like authors Turow and Grisham, Landay has also practiced law, and is able to draw on years of experience and knowledge in crafting a crime novel.

“Turow, in (the book) Presumed Innocent, revived the genre and showed everybody how it’s done,” noted Landay, “and certainly being an attorney gives credibility and more fluency in writing about the criminal justice system.”

Landay also excels at dialogue, and adeptly talks the “real” talk of teenagers, expletives not deleted.

“I have lots of nieces and nephews and teenagers in my life,” he said, laughing, “so I’m very familiar with the way they talk. Adults are often shocked at how articulate and profane and smart teenagers are.”

Landay himself enjoys young people. “Our kids
are complex human beings, and it was important to
me that Jacob not be a monster,” he said. “Latent criminality exists in all of use. We are no better than the people we read about in the newspapers.”