The Perfect Mother

September 8, 2014
Journalist Darnton’s second novel (after 2011’s An African Affair), inspired by the Amanda Knox case, fails to live up to its dramatic premise. Jennifer Lewis is compelled to travel from Philadelphia to Spain because her 20-year-old daughter, Emma, a Princeton student doing a year abroad, has been arrested in connection to another student’s murder. Emma’s story, which involves an attempted rape and a mysterious, unnamed savior, doesn’t ring true to the cops. Emma is furious at her mother. Jennifer’s marriage to Emma’s father is strained. All of this would be more interesting if the characters and their relationships were rendered with more depth. Because Jennifer and Emma are two-dimensional, their choices and their conflicts are, oddly, both baffling and predictable. One exception is the erotic subplot—the attraction between Jennifer and the book’s most intriguing character, Roberto Ortiz, a private detective Jennifer hires to help clear Emma. Maybe Roberto will star in Darnton’s next novel. Agent: Kathy Robbins, Robbins Office.

October 1, 2014
In this fictionalized account of the Amanda Knox case, journalist Darnton asks the question any parent would dread: Is my child capable of murder? Although certainly inspired by the Knox trial, Darnton focuses more on the emotional landscape-the relationship between mother and daughter, how a child's accomplishment becomes the parent's. On the surface, Jennifer Lewis seems that titular perfect mother, and the proof is in Emma, the kind of teenager who volunteers, makes good grades and gets into Princeton. Now on her junior year in Spain, Emma calls home with the shocking news that a man tried to rape her and has been killed. Jennifer flies to Seville, but her reconciliation with Emma is surprisingly rocky. Released after intensive questioning (she claims that after she screamed for help, a stranger came into her apartment, killed the rapist and fled), Emma is hostile and uncommunicative. Their high-priced Spanish lawyer and private detective Roberto Ortiz suggest more cooperation-according to Spanish law, if the police simply charge her with a crime, she can wait up to four years in prison before a trial even begins, and as it stands, the police don't believe her story. And neither does Emma's father, Mark, a corporate lawyer, though Jennifer is convinced her daughter would never lie. As Jennifer becomes angry at Mark for his disloyalty, she becomes close with Roberto, who offers just the reassurances (she really is a good mother) that Jennifer needs to hear. When Emma's story begins to fall apart-her boyfriend, Paco, is an ex-con drug dealer, the "rapist" a good boy from an affluent family, and her own kitchen knife is the murder weapon-Jennifer considers other aspects of her daughter's past, including lying, cheating and stealing, that reveal more than she can admit about her daughter and herself.A fast-paced thriller with the kind of emotional impact that transcends a simple whodunit.

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November 1, 2014
Emma Lewis is the perfect daughter: bright, pretty, and possessing a big heart. The Princeton sophomore moves to Spain for a semester abroad and, halfway through, makes the call home that is every parent's nightmare: a young man from a prominent Spanish family has been stabbed to death in her apartment, and Emma is the prime suspect. She concocts a tale in a pathetic attempt to protect her drug-dealer boyfriend, and her mother flies in to stand by her daughter, refusing to doubt a word of it. Her father, an attorney, knows she is lying but wants to protect her, and he hires a private detective and attorney to help clear her name. The story becomes a media frenzy, the stress is playing havoc on her parents' marriage, and slowly the truth begins to emerge, and her mother has to face the fact that Emma is not the same girl who left home. The changing relationships in this devastated family ring true, especially as the mystery is slowly revealed. For anyone glued to Nancy Grace during the Amanda Knox trialsthe obvious inspiration for this storythis is the book for you.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2014, American Library Association.)