In All That Is Mine I Carry with Me--a legal thriller with old-school efficiency and newer-school psychological complexity--William Landay proceeds with the line of inquiry he massaged in his breakout novel, Defending Jacob: When people are suspected of a crime, can their family members be held to a standard of objectivity?
Told from multiple viewpoints sequentially, the novel centers on the 1975 disappearance of Jane Larkin, a suburban Massachusetts mom who simply wasn't there one day when her 10-year-old daughter came home from school. There was conjecture that Jane ran off--but without her pocketbook, and without concern for her three kids? Jane's criminal defense lawyer husband, Dan Larkin, is a suspect in her disappearance, but the lead detective can't put together more than a circumstantial case against him. Four decades later, Dan is caught in a fog of Alzheimer's, but members of Jane's family are still undone by what happened and think they can find a way to breathe some life back into the cold case.
All That Is Mine I Carry with Me offers a classic mystery's rewards: scenes that seem straightforward may ultimately hold hidden significance; readers just don't know which ones will pan out until the novel's end. Like one of the book's main characters, Landay is an attorney turned novelist, and he puts his lawyer's expertise to fine use here, alongside what reads like a therapist's acuity, and a playwright's gift for snappy dialogue that makes even the novel's courtroom scenes whiz by.--Nell Beram, author and freelance writer