Maureen Corrigan

This is true.

Mysteries of every size, each week.

This American Life, wherever you get your podcasts.

I love reviewing books, but sometimes the pace of reading them can feel like that classic I Love Lucy episode at the chocolate factory.

The conveyor belt speeds up, and the books keep coming along faster than they can be wrapped in a review.

Summer gives me a chance to catch up with some good books that whizzed by in spring.

James Lasden, the family man, came out the first week of May, which is when I read it.

This nonfiction book, which grew out of a piece Lasden wrote for The New Yorker, is about the investigation and conviction of prominent South Carolina lawyer Alec Murdoch for the 2021 murders of his wife and adult son.

Then came the real-life plot twist—

A little over a week after Laszlo's book was published, Murdoch's conviction was overturned because of jury tampering.

A retrial is being scheduled.

Rather than rendering the family man obsolete, this new twist intensifies the miasma of stories that swirl around the Murdoch case, including suspicious deaths and embezzlement.

Lasden is a true crime writer in the reflective mold of his late New Yorker colleague, Janet Malcolm.

Although investigating the double murder case drives this narrative, Lasden is most interested in exploring the ultimate unsolvable mystery, the mystery of evil.

Harriet Clark's debut novel, The Hill, which came out in May, has been getting tons of deserved praise.

The novel draws explicitly from Clark's own background.

Born in 1980, Clark was 11 months old when her mother, a member of the Radical Weather Underground, was arrested and sentenced for her involvement in a Brinks armored truck robbery that resulted in the deaths of three men.

Clark's maternal grandparents got custody, and she visited her mother in prison for almost 40 years before she was paroled in 2019.

Clark's main character, Susanna, is eight when the story begins and living with her grandparents, former members of the American Communist Party.

The plot here is a marvel of sustained claustrophobic stasis.